This is one of my favorite pie crusts when making vegetable-based tarts or quiches, such as my Garlicky Tomato Tart, which is a reformed Cooking Light recipe. Just like the tart needed some healthy updating – adding back grass-fed farm-fresh nutrients provided by properly-raised eggs and milk – the pie crust also needed some reclamation work, bringing it back in line with nutrient-dense foods of yesteryear, nearly lost to the industrialized, mass-produced, nutrient-deficient foods of today’s modern civilization.

Grinding my own grains, and soaking them in an acidified solution goes a long way toward making the grains healthier and more easily digestible, explained in one of my favorite Weston A. Price articles, Be Kind To Your Grains.

There is a huge selection of grinders, including Kitchen-Aid wheat-grinder attachment, for Kitchen-Aid mixers, off-the-grid hand-grinders, and high speed micronizing units, I’ve settled on a Retsel Mil-Rite made-in-the-USA wheat grinder, made in Idaho. It best mimics my cooking technique, low ‘n slow, the grinding process slowed down to a gentle turning of stones in a true milling process, easily adjustable, resulting in a wider range of grinds than I’ve achieved using other grinding techniques.

My favorite pie crust grains include soft red winter wheat or soft white spring wheat, both lower in protein than bread-making flours, lending themselves to a flaky pastry-quality needed for a delicate pie crust.

Greek Baking Powder Biscuit Piecrust

• 2 1/4 c (281 grams) ground & sifted soft-wheat flour (substitute organic, high-quality pasty flour if you don’t grind your own grains)
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup water
• 2 T lemon juice
• 3 tablespoons olive oil

Step One: Combine first 3 ingredients in a large bowl; make a well in center of mixture. Add water and oil to flour mixture, stirring until well-blended.

Step Two: Turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface; knead 4 to 5 times. Divide dough in half. Working with one half at a time, press mixture gently into a 4-inch circle on heavy-duty plastic wrap; cover with additional plastic wrap. Chill for a minimum of 12 hours.

Step Three: Roll dough, still covered, into an 11-inch circle. Place dough in freezer 5 minutes or until plastic wrap can be easily removed.

Notes:

1. Dough can be stored up to 3 days in then refrigerator.
2. If you have issues storing too much iron, do NOT use lemon juice as it increases iron absorption. Instead, use vinegar or whey drained from whole-milk yogurt
3. I skip the entire-rolling step, instead, pressing the dough into a glass pie plate, covering with plastic, and placing in the refrigerator for a minimum of 12-hours. The already-prepared crust can be placed directly into the oven, saving extra work, and there’s no loss or reduction in flakiness.
4. If you only need 1 of the 2 crusts this recipe makes, pat the 2nd into a 4-inch disk and store in the freezer, tightly wrapped in several layers of plastic. These defrost beautifully, making sure the disk is still “chilled” when rolling, or you’ll have a gooey mess and will have to refrigerate it to be “rollable”.

Yield: 2 (10-inch) crusts (serving size: 1/6 crust)