Roll your crust thinner. In my experience a butter or lard crust cooks better. Also...if your crust has browned on the edges but not completely cooked on the bottom, pop it into the microwave for a minute. It is possible to cook the crust entirely in the microwave ( in a glass pan of course) but foil and beans won't work to keep the crust in place as it warms.... Are you taking the weights and the foil out of the crust after 10 minutes or so and then baking without the weights? The weights and foil keep the bottom from baking. You may have to cover the edges with foil when you put it back to bake the bottom. But remember, that even though the crust is baked to perfection, sitting for 24 hours with a wet filling or more will make the crust a little soggy. But I think rolling your crust thinner and returning to the oven after it's set without the weights should give a nice crisp crust. Linda C

Lard has a larger fat crystal than other fats, which is one reason it works so well in pastry. Butter gives great flavor but has a lot of water in it and it melts quickly. The combination of lard and butter in pastry is a great twosome. When I use coconut oil (frozen and grated on the large hole on my box grater), I can reduce the amount of fat by about 25 percent, especially when using pastry flour or milling soft wheat or low-gluten spelt into flour to use for pastry. Good pastry is a combination of tenderness and flakiness and each characteristic is developed differently. Pastry is all about reducing the gluten development in the flour, so choose flour (pastry flour or Southern All-Purpose flours like Martha White, White Lily, Gladiola, Red Band) that has a low protein/gluten content to begin with as a great way to reduce gluten-development up front. If you want more tender pastry while using all-purpose flour you can add a little more fat and add an acid ingredient. Divide the cold fat in two portions and mix one half in the flour until it's very finely mixed. This will coat the flour so it develops the gluten in short strands (hence short-crust pastry) when the liquid is mixed in and will give a tender crust. Quickly add the remaining fat and keep it in larger blobs. When the heat of the oven melts the blobs of fat the steam will raise those layers in the pastry we recognize as a flaky pastry. Vinegar in a recipe is another way to decrease the gluten-development. Adding an acid brings one more tenderizer into play. "Acids soften gluten, breaking apart gluten strands and keeping the pastry tender." When eggs are used in a pastry recipe it is best used for something like a meat pie. The protein from the egg will reinforce the structure of the pastry, making it strong enough to hold a hefty filling. When liquid vegetable oil is used to make pastry it is considered a "warm fat", which coats each particle of flour so completely than no gluten develops. Oil pastries are very tender and tend to be more mealy than flaky since you don't have steam raising those flaky layers. Oil pastry is generally easier to handle and is easy to roll between two sheets of waxed paper. It's neither right or wrong what type of pastry you make - it's just one of those cooking/baking choices we make - BUT - as a general rule of thumb don't take an oil pastry to the fair because it will tend to get judged down because they rarely come up to judging standards. If a sticky dough that is hard to roll-out is your problem, you have too much gluten developed - probably from adding too much liquid and/or using flour that has a high protein content. Northern all-purpose flours like King Arthur and Robin Hood really don't make good pastry because of the high amount of protein. Add as little water as possible!!! As soon as lumps of dough stick together during mixing, stop mixing and adding water. It takes very little extra water, as little as 1/2 teaspoon, to quickly toughen the dough. -Grainlady

Save yourself some time and guesswork. Cook the filling on the range in a saucepan until it's done (apples are the consistency you like). Put into your pie pan and chill well. Make your crumbs as the bakery's do. Make your crumbs, spread on a cookie sheet with sides, and bake until done--will only take 15 minutes or so. Cool, put on your pie, and sprinkle with powdered sugar. Much quicker, and you don't run the oven nearly as long. I often make apple pie by: baking the crust and crumbs at the same time (under 20 minutes of baking time), and filling with a range-top filling--which takes under 10 minutes to cook. Much more convenient.

I have used this recipe for a couple of years now and it is the best I have ever tried. It truly is a NO FAIL crust. And I can't cook! AuntCarol's Pie Crust  Never-Fail Type This pie crust recipe is one thatÂs SUPER easy to roll out  one that never gets soggy  leaving that last piece of pie as good as the first  itÂs the ONLY pie crust recipe IÂll ever use  itÂs the BEST  Ingredients  1 egg  3/4 teaspoon salt  1 tablespoon WHITE vinegar  7 tablespoons water  1 cup shortening (CRISCO)  3 cups flour BEAT egg. ADD salt, vinegar, and water. ADD shortening. BLEND with fork, while ADDING flour about a cup at a time. FORM into one big dough ball. THEN DIVIDE into 3 equal-sized dough balls (or you can divide it into 2 equal-sized dough balls like I do sometimes). ROLL OUT thin on a lightly floured surface and then PLACE into pie pan of your choice. Note: Prepared pie shell should be put into the refrigerator 30 minutes before filling  and REMEMBER all fruit pies should be baked on the lowest rack in your oven  ENJOY  Trish in SC