Best answer I found:
1 - Put the bowl, pastry knife, butter, flour, and any implements in the freezer. (There are people who believe it is possible to make a good pie crust with vegetable shortening. They are mistaken. There are also people who believe that butter makes a pie crust tough. They are also mistaken; it's not the butter that makes a crust tough, it's the water -- which is released from the butter when it gets too warm.)
2- Cut the butter into small bits (with the frozen knife, of course), then cut it into the flour (keeping everything as cold as possible). At this point, add a pinch of salt and sugar (a little more sugar if it's a sweet crust, almost none if this is for a meat pie or savory turnovers).
3 - Spray a light mist of water over the butter-flour mixture and run it around the bowl with the icy fork. Spray a few more squirts of water until the dough is a crumbly mass that doesn't stick together -- if it looks doughy, it's too wet and will shrink when you bake it and be tough. This is the trickiest part of the whole process: you need experience to know when the crust still needs another spray, and when it is just crumbly enough. But -- the crumblier the dough, the flakier the crust.
4 - Wrap the whole ball of dough in plastic, then put it in the freezer for 30 minutes to rest. (If it needs to rest longer than 30 minutes, take it out of the freezer and put it in the fridge; you want it cold but not frozen solid.)
5 - To roll it out, unwrap the ball of dough on a floured board and roll it to shape with a floured rolling pin. It should have little "dots" of butter scattered through it; they should NOT look melted.
6 - To handle the shrinkage -- MAKE THE CRUST A LITTLE BIGGER THAN THE PIE PLATE. I always leave about 1/2" extra crust around the edges so that when it shrinks, it's the right size. Yes, sometimes life really IS that simple. :-)
If you are "blind baking" your crust -- that is, baking the bottom shell empty so you can fill it later with fresh fruit, chocolate mousse, etc. -- put a layer of aluminum foil on top of the crust, then fill it about halfway with either dried rice or dried beans to weight down the foil. This will let the crust cook but not puff up -- and yes, if you've done this the way I do it will get VERY puffy.
The thing is... a proper pie crust isn't so much a recipe as it's a spiritual quest for perfection in an imperfect world. I am a total snob about pie crusts -- I sniff and sneer and shake my head at commercial pie crusts, and I lie to my friends and family about how good other people's pie crusts are (because one of the few things more important than a good pie crust is a good friend). But I know what I like, and I know what's right, and I know how to get it. Still, even I goof about one time in five -- usually by putting in too much water or not cutting the butter finely enough.
Which means that the answer to how you get a perfect pie crust is like the joke about the tourist who asked the New Yorker how to get to Carnegie Hall -- the New Yorker answered, "Practice..."
