(If you’d like to learn more about how things got to this tragic pass, see here, then here.)

I would like to claim some slack for being a relative newbie in the realm of pie crusts. Until recently, the extent of my experience consisted of my annual apple dumpling extravaganzas, always infused with fond memories harking back to a long-ago tipsy afternoon in my older sister’s house, cutting butter into flour against a backdrop of Fleetwood Mac’s Rumors cranked up too loud. It didn’t matter if the pastry’s texture wasn’t quite right—the whole dish would be soused with a buttery, cinnamon-y sugar syrup. (While I’m at it, I may as well admit that the growth of my family and resulting need to double the recipe has since driven me into using pre-made pastry sheets. Sue me.)

Once in a while, though, that homemade pastry of mine would do what it was supposed to do—roll out perfectly and stretch with near-alchemical elasticity to enclose the apples. That’s the kind of thing I expected when I set off on my lard adventure, after all the oohing and ah-ing about lard’s miraculous effect on pastry. I excitedly gathered my ingredients.

“A pound of lard?” my husband asked. “Who needs a pound of lard for pie crust? Are you trying to kill me?” I felt all thrifty as I explained to him that I’d have three dough balls, enough for an additional two crusts after the one I’d make right then. Oh, the delights that awaited!

So. Following the instructions to the letter, I made the three dough balls. I wrapped, labeled and froze two of them and popped the third into the fridge for a while. I’d heard that refrigerating pie crust dough was good because it allowed the flour’s gluten to do mysterious gluten-y things. In the meantime, I prepared the beautiful white peaches I would use for the filling.

There’s a line in the recipe, after the part about mixing the lard into the dry ingredients until the mix resembles coarse crumbs, that maybe I didn’t follow to the letter after all: “Do not overwork.” I think my crumbs were probably less coarse than they should have been.