Strawberry Pie

Whether you use strawberries when they are in season or frozen make a pie that really highlights all their wonderfulness.  This baked strawberry pie is topped with a beautiful lattice pie crust. I have some tips for making pie dough and step by step instructions if you have never made a lattice crust! 

So usually when you hear the words strawberry and pie they are usually sandwiched between the words rhubarb. But this time strawberry gets to be the shining star. 

I haven’t always had the best luck of finding rhubarb in my grocery store. But strawberries- either fresh or frozen- I can always find. Now I love a strawberry rhubarb pie, but I thought a pie without a seasonal ingredient in it like rhubarb means you can enjoy  the pie all year round. Now isn’t that better? 

How To Make The Pie Dough For This Strawberry Pie

Note: In this pie recipe I added an egg yolk to give the crust stability, and used all butter (not shown in the photos below!)- This crust shown below uses half butter/half shortening, but the process is the same. For the pie crust recipe shown in the photos, check out this post. 

Steps 1-4: Measure out your all purpose flour (properly measured), 1/2 teaspoon salt and a tablespoon sugar. For proper accuracy, it’s best to use a kitchen scale. Then go ahead and stir with a fork.

Step 5 and 6: Add your shortening. Mix in the shortening with a pastry blender.

Step 7 -9: Grate in your butter. Then fluff the mixture together with your fork. Your mixture should be crumbly and butter evenly incorporated.

Pro Tip: You want your butter to be very cold (frozen is best!) 

Step 10 and 11: Add in a tablespoon of ice water one at a time and then stir. The amount of water you add will vary depending on the weather (and humidity). So add one tablespoon at a time, and then stir together. You want the dough to look shaggy but then when you squeeze the dough it should stick together.

Step 12: If making a double crust, then divide the dough (again a kitchen scale works best for this) and shape into a round disc and wrap in plastic wrap. And refrigerate for at least 30 minutes!

Pro Tip: Line your counter with plastic wrap. Then pour the pie dough contents on to the plastic wrap. Use the plastic wrap to smush the pie dough together. The dough will come together and you won’t need to toughen the dough and heat up the butter.

Tips On Making The BEST Pie Dough:

1. Make sure everything is cold. I use frozen butter actually. And ice water. You could even go as far as putting your bowls, pastry cutter, and flour in the freezer if you so choose!
2.  I love an all butter crust. Butter gives the pie crust tremendous flavor. I do use half butter and half shortening for the best flaky crust, but choose which fat you prefer!  All butter or half butter/half shortening you can’t go wrong!
3. Work the dough as little as possible, leaving good sized visible chunks of butter in your dough there is no need to use shortening.
4. Don’t overwork the pie dough! Use your finger tips not your palms of your hand when working with the pie dough. It’s ok if you still see some chunks of butter In fact, it’s preferred!

To make your piecrust edge, this is a great tutorial on all the different options! 

To Roll And Form The Pie Crust – Step By Step

Step 1: Sprinkle your surface with a bit of flour. You just want to slightly flour your surface so you don’t incorporate too much extra flour into your dough.

Step 2: Roll out your dough.

Pro Tip: If your dough is sticking you can always pop it back into the fridge. If your dough is breaking, it may be too dry. Add a few sprinkles of water to the dough.

Step 3: To see if your dough has been rolled out large enough, turn your pie plate upside down. The pie dough should be larger than your pie plate.

Step 4 and 5: Using your rolling pin, roll your pie dough over the pin so it’s completely rolled around it (like a roll of paper towels!)

Step 6: With your pie dough rolled around the pin, roll it out over the pie plate.

Step 7: Trim the overhang with a pair of kitchen shears, leaving about a 1 -inch overhang.

Step 8:  For a single crust: Fold the extra pie dough under creating an edge. For a double crust, repeat steps 1-6 and fold both top and bottom dough under to create an edge.

Step 9: Crimp the edges. For 4 easy ways to crimp and decorate your pie crust, read this post. 

How To Make The Strawberry Filling

Step 1: Cut Up Your Strawberries. I sliced mine so they would hold up in the pie.  I used about 4 cups of strawberries.

 And to those, I added in some white granulated sugar. Only a 1/2 cup, which gave them some sweetness but also left some tartness too. 

If you want your pie a little on the sweeter side, then add in more sugar.

To this I added in some cornstarch. Now cornstarch which help to thicken your pie as it bakes, so you don’t end up with a big soupy mess in the end. You can also use tapioca to thicken. 

Now to this filling, I added in some fresh nutmeg and a little bit of fresh orange juice. I love the little bit of warmth, and depth from the nutmeg and added acidity from the orange. Cinnamon would work too if that’s what you have. And lemon would be a great alternative to the orange.

So now that you have prepared your filling, you want it to sit for 10 minutes, get all happy and thicken up a bit. Let those flavors get to know each other.  Oh hey orange, how do you do? Nice to meet you nutmeg.

Once the pie filling has sat for 10 minutes, you can pour this filling into your prepared pie crust. Now on to making the lattice top!

How To Make A Lattice Pie Crust- Step By Step

Step 1: To create a lattice top, you want to start by rolling out your second pie dough and cut into 1-inch strips. I used my pizza cutter to do this, but a knife works as well.

Step 2: From there you want to lay 5 strips of dough on top of the filling.

Step 3: Then fold back every other strip.

Step 4: And lay another strip of dough going in the opposite direction. Then fold the strips you folded back back into place. 

Step 5: Repeat this step again by folding back the other two strips you did NOT fold back

Step 6: Now lay a pie strip down going in the horizontal position. You will see this pie strip now lies across first 3 strips you originally folded back. 

Step 7: Fold the strips back into place. 

Step 8: Repeat Steps 3-7 until your entire pie has a lattice crust!

All that is left is to bake the pie. 

Slice some up and top with ice-cream. Hello summer!

More Strawberry Recipes

• Fresh Strawberry Pound Cake (with strawberry glaze!)
• Strawberry Rhubarb Bars
• Strawberry Pie
• Strawberry Galette

And don’t forget to check out these 15+ summer berry recipes as well. 

I hope these tips, tricks, and step by step photos help you in creating a scrumptious strawberry pie with a beautiful lattice top to share this summer!

If you liked this recipe , do me a favor and let me know and leave me a comment! I love hearing from you!