We Tasted 9 Frozen Pie Crusts—Here Are Our Favorites

Baking-heavy holidays like Thanksgiving can be overwhelming affairs: You’ve got to cook a show-stopping centerpiece like turkey or rib roast, prep all the sides, and—depending on the size of your celebration—make several pies. While many of us aspire to make pie crust from scratch, sometimes you simply do not have the time or bandwidth, which is where ready-made pie dough comes in. Even as an avid baker and food professional who keeps homemade pie dough in my freezer, I reach for a frozen crust from time to time. With plenty of store-bought options to choose from, there’s no need to stress about making your own dough from scratch when you've got a lot of other things on your mind and in your oven. But even if you aren't making a homemade pie crust, you want to be sure the crust you’re using is sturdy enough to hold your pie filling and tastes great. 

To find out which frozen pie doughs and shells are worth buying, we pulled together nine different pie crusts you’re likely to find in your local supermarket, baked and filled them with pumpkin pie filling (using the same pie filling for each one), and sampled them without knowing which crust was which. Our tests included pre-rolled dough that you have to thaw and shape into your own pie pan, as well as raw shells pre-shaped and sold inside a tin. After tasting our way through nine freshly made pies, we then stored each for a day in the fridge to see how well they held up. After this slightly queasy-making but overall very fun two-day pie-eating contest, we tabulated the results and crowned an overall winner we’d be happy to invite to our own Thanksgiving celebrations, as well as a few other worthy contenders. 

The Criteria

Pie crust should be crisp and flaky, with a pleasant buttery flavor. It should have a slight hint of salt but not be overly salty, nor should it be overly sweet. It should be just tender enough to give way when bitten into, but not so soft that it crumbles at the slightest touch. The best pie crusts should also be sturdy enough to withstand the weight and moisture of any pie filling, be it custard, fruit, or syrupy nuts. In an ideal world, pie crust should be so delicious that you’d want to nibble away at the edges of the pie when you think nobody is looking.

Overall Winner: Trader Joe’s Pie Crusts

Our tasters enjoyed both the flavor and texture of Trader Joe’s pie crust, which is found in the freezer section as a pre-rolled dough that you press into a pan before baking. Our associate editorial director, Megan O. Steintrager, thought it was “mild and buttery,” while Doan Nguyen, photo editor at Food and Wine—with whom we share office space in NYC—described its flavor as having “a nice balance with salt and butter.” The crust was flaky and had good structural integrity; one of our tasters called it a “workhorse crust.” It also held up well the next day, making it a good pre-rolled dough to reach for if you plan on traveling with your pie or preparing it a day in advance. At just $4.49, this crust is both delicious and affordable, and one we'd gladly use for our own pies.

Runners Up

The Best Convenient Pie Crust: Wholly Wholesome Organic Traditional 9” Pie Shells

“Solid, crumbly, but not structurally inconsistent,” our Food and Wine colleague Dylan Garret wrote of this pie shell. “Pie handle works well as a pie handle and did not break,” he wrote, referring to how you could pick up a slice by the edge of the crust without it breaking and sending your pie onto the floor. Our associate visuals director, Amanda Suarez, thought this dough tasted “pleasant,” and others thought it was buttery, subtly sweet, and delicious enough to eat on its own. This dough contains just five ingredients—organic wheat flour, organic palm fruit shortening, water, organic cane sugar, and sea salt—making it one of the crusts with the fewest ingredients used if that's a selling point for you. Interestingly, there is zero butter, despite the fact that more than one taster made notes of its buttery flavor. 

Like our overall winner, this crust held up nicely the next day, and though slightly softened, still maintained its shape and bite. Because this is a pre-shaped pie shell, there’s zero crimping or shaping involved, making it a convenient option to reach for if you’re in a pinch but still want a flaky, tasty dough.

An Affordable but Delicious Option: Boston Baking Homestyle 9-Inch Pie Shells

This frozen pie shell was tender and crumbly; this was Megan’s favorite—she thought it was buttery, albeit “ever so slightly artificial tasting.” Similarly, Amanda described this as “nice and buttery,” noting that it “feels like what a pie crust is.” Some tasters, however, thought it was slightly sandy and dry. With just five ingredients, Boston Baking’s pie shells (along with Wholly Wholesome’s pie shells) had the shortest ingredient list of all the doughs we sampled, and contained just flour, butter, water, sugar, and salt. (Note to Megan: Nothing artificial here, so we are not sure what you were tasting!) Though this pie crust was slightly softer the next day, it still held up reasonably well. At $4.79, Boston Baking is a delicious pie shell that’s also budget-friendly.

The Flakiest Pie Dough: Wholly Wholesome Organic Traditional Pie Dough

Every single taster noted how flaky Wholly Wholesome’s pre-rolled dough was. Megan found it “flaky to the point of being crumbly,” while Amanda thought it was a bit too flaky for her liking. But if a crisp pie crust with plenty of layers is what you’re after, this is your best bet. Though some tasters thought this dough had a slightly bitter flavor, others thought it was balanced and buttery. 

Wholly Wholesome’s fully shaped and ready-to-bake frozen pie shells covered above have just five ingredients; this dough, which is shaped and ready for you to pop into your own pan, has seven: wheat flour, palm fruit shortening, water, cane syrup, salt, cane sugar, and guar gum. Once again, not a single ounce of butter in sight. Due to its extreme flakiness, this crust did not hold up well when stored with filling inside, instead crumbling easily when pressed the next day. If you plan on using this pre-rolled dough, we recommend enjoying your pie the day it’s made—unless a soggy bottom is what you’re after. At $8.69, this was the most expensive pie dough we sampled.

The Contenders

• Trader Joe’s Pie Crusts $4.49
• Wholly Wholesome Organic Traditional 9” Pie Shells $7.99
• Wholly Wholesome Organic Traditional Pie Dough $8.69
• Boston Baking Homestyle Pie Shells $4.79
• Stop & Shop Pie Crust Deep Dish 9-Inch $4.99
• Marie Callender’s Pastry Pie Shells $6.39
• 365 by Whole Foods Frozen Pie Dough $5.99
• Pillsbury Refrigerated Pie Crust $5.29
• Pillsbury Frozen Pie Crust, Deep Dish, Two 9-Inch $5.99
  

In Conclusion

While our winners could pass for homemade—yes, by a good baker!—some of the crusts we tasted had stale or even rancid notes, with some that were either too tough, crispy, and borderline chewy. Overall, our favorite pie crusts were those that were able to strike a balance between flavor and texture: They were all delicious, both crisp and tender, and contained seven ingredients or fewer. Though our tasters had a preference for crusts with what they perceived as a buttery flavor, three out of our four top picks contained shortening instead of butter, and our winner had both butter and shortening. Unlike many of the other pie crusts we tasted, our winners did not contain preservatives, food coloring, soybean oil, or dough conditioners. In other words: Our favorite pie crusts all contained ingredients that we’d likely reach for in our own homes when preparing dough.

Our Testing Methodology

All taste tests are conducted with brands completely hidden and without discussion. Tasters taste samples in random order. For example, taster A may taste sample 1 first, while taster B will taste sample 6 first. This is to prevent palate fatigue from unfairly giving any one sample an advantage. Tasters are asked to fill our tasting sheets ranking the samples for various criteria. All data is tabulated and results are calculated with no editorial input in order to give us the most impartial representation of actual results possible.