...one of you, anyway. Here's the recipe for my mom's perfect pie crust. She got it out of a recipe collection put together by the staff of the elementary school where she taught in 1980. The title of the recipe is "Perfect Pie Crust," and I can say that for me, it always has been perfect. It's delicious, easy to work with, and has never let me down yet.

Perfect Pie Crust

4 cups flour
1 Tb sugar
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
2 cups shortening

1/2 cup water
1 egg
1 Tb vinegar or lemon juice

Mix together dry ingredients, then cut in shortening with a pastry cutter. Mix together wet ingredients, then stir into flour/shortening mixture. Makes enough for one large double-crust pie.

Some notes:

The recipe says either vinegar or lemon juice, but I always use lemon juice.

I suggest using just plain regular vegetable shortening for this recipe. I have tried the butter-flavored kind and it is nasty. I know some cooks swear by using real lard in pie crust, but I've never tried it. Good old Crisco (or generic store brand shortening) works great.

I used to always use just regular measuring cups to measure my shortening, but since switching to the Pampered Chef kind where you scoop the shortening into it and then use the bottom to push it out, I find that actually kind of a scant 2 cups--not quite full to the brim--works best. I think this is because with the conventional scoop and scrape method, you always left some shortening stuck to the inside of the cup, where the push-out type of measuring cup doesn't leave any behind.

You will want to have plenty of flour on your rolling-out surface and your rolling pin, to make sure the dough doesn't stick.

To bake this for a pre-baked crust, prick the bottom and sides of the pie crust with a fork and bake for 10 minutes at 450. Otherwise just bake using the directions for the type of pie you're making.

Some pie crust recipes I've seen tell you to use ice water for the dough and to make sure the dough is very cold. I've never found that the temperature of the water matters, and I don't chill the dough before rolling out.

This dough recipe makes enough for a double-crust pie. If I need to make a single-crust, I just halve all the ingredients and try to sort of let only half the egg fall into the dough when I crack it. I have a friend who uses this recipe who tells me that she just makes the whole recipe, then wraps up the unused half of it and puts it in the freezer. Then next time she needs to make a single-crust pie, she thaws the dough and rolls it out and bakes it as usual. She says this works well, but I haven't tried it yet.

Happy pie-baking!