Avoid This Mistake When Making Your Own Pretzel Pie Crust

If you're looking for an easy pie crust to make from scratch at home, make one out of pretzels. They're one of our 17 best alternatives to pie crust. The bottom of your pie will be crispy and buttery and perfect for many different types of pies and even cheesecake. However, there's a crucial mistake you should avoid when making your own pretzel pie crust: Not crushing the pretzels fine enough. 

Melted butter is usually what we use to hold graham crackers and pretzel crumbs together when we're making pie crusts. If you don't crush pretzels into fine, small, even bits, it will be hard for the crumbs to hold together when you're par-baking it. After you've baked the entire pie, one slice and the pie crust can crumble and break.

Now, there are a few ways to finely crush pretzels. One is to use a food processor to pulse the pretzels until you get fine and even crumbs. The smaller the crumbs, the better. But let's say you don't have a food processor. What then? Well in that case, you can seal the pretzels in a ziplock bag and roll a rolling pin over the bag until you've crushed them into fine bits. Smashing them with a food mallet wouldn't be wrong, and would be cathartic too.

Once your fine pretzel crumbs are ready, it's time to make a pie crust. Mix the crumbs with melted butter and a little sugar (to sweeten the crust) before pressing the crumbs onto a pie pan, in one even, compact layer. Par-bake the crust for a few minutes until toasted but not burnt, then cool it down. Now it's ready for pie filling. We have plenty of sweet and savory pie recipes for you to try this week with your pretzel pie crust.

Instead of using a store-bought graham cracker crust, use the pretzel pie crust to make our delicious French strawberry pie recipe. If you used salted pretzels, the crispy, butter crust will be a nice contrast to the tarty, soft strawberries and cream filling. In the same vein, a properly made pretzel pie crust would pair well with our no-bake strawberry cheesecake recipe. 

Finally, you can hack a pretzel pie crust without crushing the pretzels or par-baking them first. This trick will need you to use a little imagination. Make a no-bake dessert, like icebox cheesecake, or a custard, and simply top the dish with whole pretzels. Or, line the edge of the dessert with pretzels. You get all the crispy texture and added flavor with little work involved.