I know this is an old post but crust can or can not be very finicky.
In the process of perfecting my own I have scoured the whole internet for recipes.
Your recipe is quite a standard butter crust used by many from famous to amateur bakers.
Even Rose Levy Beranbaum uses similar with a reduction in flour, not other ingredients.
I feel if you reduce butter you inadvertently have increased flour -- that will risk a
sandy dough texture. You know like accidently breathing in sawdust. That was a big
fault in my otherwise tasty dough in the thick areas.
I have mixed lard and butter, which is fine, but my guess is the salt proportion is incorrect.
All butter dough is most delicious and lard is great for a savory recipe.
Your recipe is 50% of that standard recipe used by many except for the salt:
2 1/2 cups flour
1/2 Tbsp granulated sugar
1/2 tsp sea salt
1/2 lb COLD unsalted butter (1 sticks)
I had an idea to increase the salt because it is very tasty sea salt and also my other attempts
used SALTED butter. I have a feeling that when extra salt is added to the dough and not already
a part of the butter which protects the dough from water absorption (fat repells water) -- the free
floating extra salt will absorb more water and make your dough drier..That's what happened to
my dough. When I rolled it out it looked like a dried up river bed. I thought it happened because
I had a sad thought. Your feelings will also affect the dough so have loving thoughts!
Now I used unsalted kerrygold the silver foil instead of gold foil, just in case..
And keep the 1/2 tsp. of salt exact by weight. For your recipe it should be 1/4 salt since it's scaled down.
Do everything by weight so you can scale up or scale down very precisely.
You can get a scale that measures with .01 accuracy. for your finer proportions like 1/2 teaspoons.
I was able to scale up a test pie very accurately --even the round toffee that I made for the pie
bottom. Using my favorite formula. A= πr2 -- Pie R square!
