Pie Crust... Failed.

Nobody's perfect, ok?!?  In the spirit of humbleness, I'm going to write about my first real Bake or Buy failure.  It was time for the pie test, which I was very excited for.  I was attempting apple pies with a refrigerated crust and a crust from scratch, made with oil (I don't keep shortening on hand, which is how a typical crust is made... I don't know why I didn't do butter).

The store brand: Harris Teeter Refrigerated Pie Dough (store brand)

My Recipe (from http://whatscookingamerica.net/piecrst.htm):
2 cups flour
1 tsp salt
1/4 cup milk
1/2 cup vegetable oil

- Mix the flour and salt together in a large bowl.
- Measure the vegetable oil and the milk into the same liquid measuring cup but do not stir.
- Add to the flour/salt mixture; mix briskly to combine until the dough comes together into a ball.

I could already tell there is an issue going on here...

- Divide the dough in half. Roll out each half to 1/8 inch thick between 2 sheets of wax paper.

So, how did it go?  It was laughable.  The dough was so crumbly that it would never make a pie shell.  So instead, I did some little tarts with half the dough:

But the dough burnt and was really hard when they were done.

The other half I added some water to and did a bottom pie crust (the bottom pie - I just made a crumb topping):

The top crust is the store brand.  It was SO easy.  And tasted so much better - the oil crust was just hard and awful.

It was so bad/sad that I didn't even photograph the final product!  UGH.  The pie crust will be revisited, but for now...

Bake or Buy?  BUY!

Do you have a great pie crust recipe? Do you just want to poke fun at my failure?  Share in below in the comments section!