This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my disclosure policy.
All recipes on Doggone Baking are intended for humans — the dogs are just our enthusiastic photo assistants and taste-test spectators.
Easy Pie Crust Designs for Beginner Bakers
If you’re a beginner baker, or just new to making pies, often the crust is the most intimidating part of the process. Perfectly mixing a batch of all-butter pie dough or another pastry dough is only the first step to making a beautiful pie. Rolling out the pie dough, fitting it into a pie tin, and making it look nice can all be intimidating steps at first. But not to worry! We have instructions for each step of the process to help you complete your first pie and beyond. This page is for learning how to make easy pie crust designs. All you need is a spoon or a fork!
To follow this guide, you’ll want a batch of pastry-style pie crust such as a flaky all-butter pie dough, and you’ll want to have it rolled out and ready to fit into your pie tin for shaping.
This guide is for the easiest ways to shape a pie crust and easy pie crust designs. If you’re feeling more ambitious, here are other pie crust edges we have guides for:
- Decorative Pie Dough Cutouts (Intermediate)
- Leaf Edge (Advanced)
- Rolled, Fluted, or Crimped Pie Crust (Advanced)
- Braided Pie Crust Edges (Expert)
Note: This post covers how to form pie shells (think pumpkin pie or pecan pie) for pies without a top crust.
Quick Tips on Forming Pie Crusts
There are a few general tips that make shaping pie crusts a little bit easier.
- Exaggerate the Shape of the Crust: Pie crust almost always loses some of it’s shape as it bakes. As the pie bakes, the crust begins to revert back towards its original shape. Exaggerating the shape, more defined flutes, deeper ridges, etc., while forming the crust helps it retain its shape after baking. If you’re baking a pie where the intricacy of the design matters, you can help the crust retain its shape better by reducing the proportion of butter in the pie dough. However, you’ll be trading some of the flakiness for detail.
- Freeze Your Pie Crust: Freezing your pie crust before baking and baking the pie crust from frozen helps it retain its shape better while baking as well. Freezing the pie dough before baking it keeps the butter solid until it’s baked creating flakier layers. Additionally, pastry dough shrinks less when it’s baked from frozen.
Fitting Pie Dough Into a Pie Tin
Before following this tutorial, you should already have rolled out a batch of pie dough. If you haven’t, you can follow my recipe for all-butter pie dough here, or my tutorial for rolling out pie dough here.
Start by taking your round of rolled pie dough out of the refrigerator. It should feel cool to the touch but still flexible; it should be fairly firm but not so cold that it cracks when bent. If you chose to freeze our pie dough in advance, let it rest until it becomes malleable, either at room temperature or in the refrigerator.
Once the dough is at a good temperature, center the round of dough over your pie tin and adjust it until it’s evenly positioned. Some tutorials suggested wrapping the dough around your rolling pin to transfer it, but if the dough is at the right temperature, it should be sturdy enough to pick it up and move it directly.
Once centered, gently guide the dough into the corners of the pie tin. Lift the edges slightly with one hand while sliding the dough downward. Avoid stretching or pulling the dough. This will cause the dough to contract while baking and cause the crust to slump into the tin. After fitting the dough fully into the tin, run your fingers along the inside to smooth out the inner crease.
Now your crust is ready to be formed! If the dough has softened while fitting it into the pan, return it to the refrigerator for a few minutes to firm back up before forming.
Easiest Way to Make a Pie Crust: Simple Press & Trim Method
If you’re new to pie baking, or just want the easiest possible approach, this is the method for you. Once your pie crust is fitted into the tin, use kitchen scissors to trim the excess dough so it’s flush with the edge of the pie tin.
That’s it! No fancy crimping, fluting, or decorating – just a simple, neat edge that gets the job done. From here, transfer your pie crust to the freezer until you’re ready to blind bake your pie crust.
Easy Pie Crust Designs with Forks and Spoons
If you want an easy, beginner-friendly way to elevate your trimmed pie crust, you can make easy pie crust designs with just some forks and spoons.
This method builds on the simple press & trim pie crust by adding a little bit of a finishing touch. Once your pie crust is fitted into the tin, trim the overhang with kitchen scissors so the dough is flush with the pan, just like the press & trim method above.
After trimming, use the tines of a fork or the rounded edge of a spoon to press a repeating pattern around the rim of the pie tin. Forks create straight lines, while spoons give you scalloped curves. This is a simple, beginner-friendly way to give your pie crust a polished, decorative look with tools you already have in your kitchen. Once the edges are to your liking, transfer your pie tin to the freezer until you’re ready to blind bake your pie crust.
How to Bake a Pie Crust
Once you’ve formed and frozen your pie crust, depending on what kind of pie you’re making, you may need to bake your pie crust. If you’re making any kind of pie that doesn’t need to be baked in the oven, you’ll need to bake your pie crust first. Some classic examples are chocolate cream pie or banana cream pie. Even if you’re making a pie that does need to go back into the oven, like a pecan pie or a pumpkin pie, you might still want to blind-bake your pie crust for an extra crispy crust.
The process for baking a pie crust without any filling inside of the crust is called blind baking. You can find my guide to blind baking pie crust here!
About Me
In 2016, I left my office job and became a professional baker. These days I spend my days testing recipes and baking pies while my two dogs snooze happily nearby.
Leave a Reply