1. Use half butter, half lard. The butter is there for flavour, while the lard keeps the dough supple and prevents the crust from shrinking. All-butter pastry (although extremely tasty!) is much harder to work with and prone to shrinking.

2. Once you cut the fat into your flour, chill the bowl in the freezer for 10 minutes before adding the liquid. Keeping everything ice cold increases the flakiness of the crust.

3. Don't handle the dough too much. All it needs is a few kneads, just until it forms a loose, ragged ball.

4. When rolling out dough, never roll over the edge, otherwise it will become thin, tapered and cracked. Rotate the dough and bulges along the edge will disappear as you roll.

5. Bake your pie on the bottom rack of the oven in a glass pie plate so you can see when the bottom is golden brown. The crust takes the longest to cook, and there's nothing more unappetizing than a soggy, underbaked piecrust.

Check out our recipe for Classic Apple Pie.

This story was originally part of "5 Piecrust Best Practices" in the October 2015 issue. Subscribe to Canadian Living today and never miss an issue!