My name is Kristen and I am a pastryphobe. [Well, pastry-making-phobe. I assure you, I have no fear of eating it.]

I know there must be other pastryphobes out there, because every Pie Crust 101 primer you read is just one long list of things you absolutely must do just right in order to avoid crappy crust: ice water! cold butter! don't handle it too much! don't stretch the dough! watch out for over-browning!

Listen up, pie recipe writers. I'm anxious enough already when trying something new. If you're giving me a recipe in which that many things can go wrong, it's like giving a hypochondriac access to WebMD: I already know all those calamities are about to befall me, so I may as well just lie down on the couch and order a pizza instead.

But, determined to overcome my fear, I decided to just go for it.

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After a record number of different suggestions over on my own blog, I finally went with the simplest one I could find: Martha Stewart's recipe for pate brisee.

The filling was another matter altogether. I've had about as many apples as I can stand for one season, but March in NYC does not lend itself to cheap, plentiful berries of any sort. If I wanted a mix of fresh berries, a pie's worth was going to cost me, oh, around $23. For one pie.

So! Frozen berries it is! Besides, this is about the pie crust, right? Speaking of which...

Dry ingredients? Check.

Butter?

Check. Also, yikes: two sticks is a lot of butter.

At this point, I found several other things I suddenly needed to do: I'll just wash this cutting board first... and wash the cats' water bowl... what else is on the radio?... maybe I'll make some coffee...

I spent about an hour just warily circling the dough ingredients. I didn't even realize I was doing it until I found I had nothing else to do; I was just standing in the middle of a clean kitchen, staring down a food processor full of flour.

I put the tiny cubes of butter in, whizzed them around until it looked like crumbs, then slowly poured a stream of ice water in... at which point, I had to face the fact that my food processor is woefully runty. It didn't make the ball of dough I anticipated; it made this cylinder of semi-dough in the middle with a bunch of crumbly dry bits around it.

I dumped the whole thing in a bowl — the dough cylinder making a resounding whump! as it dropped in — and tried my best to incorporate the wet parts with the dry parts.

At this point, I smooshed all the little crumbly bits together (gently! without the dreaded over-handling!) until they formed two lumps, one slightly bigger than the other. After they were wrapped in plastic wrap, I left them in the fridge for about an hour, while I went and ordered a full-size food processor from Amazon.

Once my order was placed, I went back to the kitchen to roll out the dough.

This was actually easier than I anticipated. I bought a nonstick rolling pin, which worked brilliantly, allowing me to roll the dough using only a small amount of extra flour.

I used a filling of (previously frozen) strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, and blackberries, as well as a jar of pitted sour cherries, combined with sugar, flour, and cornstarch.

Then, it went into a 425° oven — for 10 minutes, then I reduced the heat to 350°, and let it bake until it was golden brown and the filling bubbled, which took about 50 minutes, and gave me this:

(Of course, as soon as I took it out of the oven, I realized I do not own a cake/pie server. So, you're not going to get a loving shot of the sliced end result, because I mangled every piece I put on a plate. It looked like messed-up pie. Use your imagination.)

So, after all that trepidation, how was it?

The filling... was not so good. The fruit was much more tart than I anticipated, and after a couple bites, it was just too sour for me — although my husband (who hates fruit pies because they are always too sweet) really liked it. But, like I said, this was all about the crust, right?

The crust... was actually pretty great. It wasn't the best crust I've ever had, but honestly, it was really damn close. It was buttery and flaky but substantial enough that it didn't shatter into crumbs when you put a fork to it. It was a little heavy, and that's possibly because I wasn't all that clear on how thin I needed to roll the dough.

So. It definitely wasn't as sweet as pie, but as easy as pie? Yeah, I guess it was.

Look at me! I'm on the road to being pastryphobia-free! One pie at a time!

Until next week...