Detail

Cut the butter and lard into small pieces and stash them in the freezer while you amass the rest of the hardware and software.

Take the flour and slot for a spin in your food processor (3 to 4 quick pulses should do the trick).

Add the butter and pulse 8 to 10 times, until the mixture looks uniformly lumpy.

Add the lard and pulse another 5 to 7 times. The goal here is to wind up with very small pieces of butter and somewhat bigger pieces of lard.

Remove the lid of the food processor and spritz the surface of the mixture with just enough water to uniformly moisten.

Wait about 30 seconds, spritz and pulse 3 times again. The goal here is to have the mixture hold its shape when squeezed together, while using as little of the water as possible.

Drop the mixture into a large zip-to bag and use the plastic to shape the mix into a disk about 5 inches across. Seal the bag and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Place an oven rack in the middle-lower position and preheat the oven to 425 degrees.

When you retrieve the dough from the chill chest, stash a sheet pan or cookie sheet in the freezer along with 2 matching pie tins.

Now, lay the bag containing the dough disk on the counter, open the bag, reach in, and scoot the dough disk to the middle. Then roll it -- that's right, inside the bag -- until the disk is roughly 10 to 12 inches across. The best way to do this is to roll from the center straight out, then rotate the bag 10 minutes and repeat. Once you've worked your way all the way around a couple of times, you should have a relatively uniform sheet.

Fetch the pan from the freezer and slide the dough, still in the bag, onto it. Aluminum is a mighty fine conductor, so it'll suck any heat out of the dough lickety-split, thus keeping the fats inside in a solid state.

Now is the time for the bag to throw itself on your sward. Use a paring knife to cut the bag down one side, then the other so that you can peel back the part that covers the dough.

Bring hither the chilly pie plates.

Place one of the plates (right side up) on top of the dough. Holding this pan in place, slide your other hand under the baking sheet and flip the whole thing over. Now take the sheet away and you should be looking at a pice of dough lying across an inverted pie pan.

Place the other pan (inverted) on top of the dough and push gently downward. You should now have one pie dough sandwiched between two pie tins that are both facing down. Odds are good there will be at least an inch of pie dough sticking out of this union all the way around. Use your paring knife to trim the ragged edge away, leaving a half inch of dough all the way around, if possible.

Carefully flip the whole thing back over again.

Remove pan number 1 and -- behold -- a perfect pie dough perfect position in a pie plate.