Pie Crust

                                                                      
You keep reading everywhere that pie crust must be handled gently and not over mixed or whatever. This is true but only after a point. When there is just flour and butter in the bowl, you can handle it however much you want because the gluten only gets activated in the presence of water. In fact, the more the butter is rubbed into the flour, the shorter the gluten strands become and the more tender the pastry will be. This is similar to Roses technique of making cake where she creams the flour and leaveners with the fat. Of course, if we rub in the butter too much, the pastry won't be flaky, it will just be tender. So how about a combination of both:

Let's use a 3:2:1 pie dough.(flour:butter:water. Measure out flour first, divide by third to get quantity of water. Then its easy to calculate butter needed.)
Melt 1/3 or 1/2 the butter and let it cool. Remaining butter, we can freeze it and then cut into small pieces, about medium dice. Cream the melted butter with the flour, adding salt or sugar at that stage. Let it rip. Perhaps all the flour wont be hydrated or greased because the butter quantity may not be enough? Then add the frozen butter cubes, stir in the water to bind. I like KA's idea of spraying any dry patches with water using a spray bottle.

With a pie dough made this way, I think the pastry will be tender because of the melted butter and flaky because of the cubed butter.