Randy,
That article was interesting and I wonder how it would relate to making dough for pizza. I can see how a lard or Crisco oil could be interesting to try, using hot water.
I have made many kinds of pie crusts and meat pies where there are two layers of crusts. In all the years I have been tinkering around with them, all the recipes call for cold water and some even ice water. Some have high amounts of regular liquid Crisco oil or solid Crisco. What my experiences are is the less you play around with the dough and the colder the temperatures, the crisper the crust will get. Some of my pie dough I roll out between wax papers, because it is so fragile. I also have botched up many attempts with pie dough. It is something like pizza, if you do something wrong, it will end up not being light and flaky.
That formula I tried for the Giordano’s crust was great in my opinion. There are a lot of formulas for deep-dish pies here on the forum. You might also find one you like better.
Norma
