My family has a long history of homemade pie fillings and crusts, as I’ve shared in the past and this week in my Twice as Tasty column for the Flathead Beacon. I can’t remember when I ate or even exactly when I helped to make my first pie, but in my mother’s and grandmother’s kitchen, the crust was always mixed from scratch and the extra dough was always rerolled, sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar, and baked as a treasured snack.

These homemade pie crusts tended to consist of the same simple ingredients—the ideal setup for mastering the technique of making them. Once you find a pie dough recipe you like, whether it’s the one I share in my column this week or from another source, I recommend sticking with it and using it for everything from fruit and cream pies to quiche. When it becomes your go-to recipe, you’ll never worry about making a mistake, and you’ll never need to buy a premade shell.

Learn more about pie crusts and get the complete recipe for Cinnamon-and-Sugar Pie Crust in my column.

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Twice as Tasty

The pie dough I share this week is my master recipe. I use the same batch size for deep-dish pies, but the dough fully fills the plate and I don’t end up with the bonus cinnamon-and-sugar snack. For a berry pie with a double crust or a cherry pie with a lattice top, I simply double my master recipe.

Once you have a pie dough recipe you love, you’ll learn where you can make small tweaks. You might sprinkle cinnamon and sugar on the pie crust itself before filling it with spiced pumpkin puree, all the components of the pumpkin pie recipe I’m leading up to next week just in time for Thanksgiving dinner. Or you might work in some dried herbs and grated cheese for a savory crust. But basically, you can make the same recipe the same way for every filling and impress everyone who eats a slice.

Here are just a few of my favorite fillings for homemade pie crust that you’ll find on the blog.

• Apple Crumble-Top Pie, in a standard pie plate or deep-dish style
• Late-Season Tomato Pie
• Spring Vegetable Quiche

If you’re nervous about making a full pie from scratch, you can start with a galette, which uses a similar dough but is meant to have a forgiving and rustic freeform shape. Like pies, I fill galettes with a range of flavors, from pears and goat cheese to huckleberries and rhubarb.

Want more Twice as Tasty recipes? Get my books! Click here to order a personally signed, packaged, and shipped copy of The Complete Guide to Pickling directly from me. I also share tasty ways to use pickles in The Pickled Picnic; it’s only available here.