Is Butter Or Shortening Better For Pie Crust? (2024)

FAQs

Is Butter Or Shortening Better For Pie Crust? ›

Butter for flakiness and flavor, and shortening for its high melting point and ability to help the crust hold shape. You can use butter-flavor shortening if desired. If you want to skip the shortening, feel free to try this all-butter pie crust instead.

1. Use Very Cold Butter or Fat. Butter, shortening, lard, or suet—whatever fat the recipe calls for should be well-chilled and cut into small pieces to start with for the flakiest crust in the end. The fat in a pie crust must maintain some of its integrity in the dough to make the crust truly flaky.

As shortening is able to withstand higher temperatures and does not melt easily, it creates flaky and crisp yet tender pie crusts when used alone or in combination with butter.

As shortening is 100% vegetable oil, it has a higher melting point than butter, so stays solid longer when baking. When the shortening does finally melt, steam forms in pockets and puffs the layers of dough apart, making a slightly flaky and less flavorful crust.

Fat keeps the layers of flour/water "matrix" separated as the pie bakes; the longer fat is present in its solid form (score one for shortening, with its high melting point), the more flakes will form, the more tender/flakier the crust will be.

Butter made a tastier, flakier, sturdier crust by far. This isn't to say that shortening and lard aren't useful ingredients. Shortening is a great way to get incredibly tender desserts. It's part of what makes these pumpkin whoopie pies so delectable.

#2—Add cold water

Before you start making the dough, fill a glass with ice and water. Add the ice water gradually to the dough, about one tablespoon or so at a time, and stop when the dough is just moist enough to hold together when a handful is squeezed.

The pros: Butter has the best flavor. A butter pie crust forms light, lofty, flaky layers while it bakes. The flakiness comes partially from the water content of butter, which evaporates as the pie bakes and turns to steam, separating and puffing up the layers in dough.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of using butter in a pie crust? Advantages : excellent flavor and forms distinct flaky layers. Disadvantages: Expensive and butter melts easy bettween 82.5 and 96.8 degrees F. It takes more time to make pastry because it must be refrigerated.

Butter: A rich flavor and a flaky crust, but harder to work with. For some pastry chefs, butter is the obvious choice. “My preferred fat for pie crusts will always be butter. To me, it is all about flavor, and no other fat gives flavor to a crust like butter does.

Why use shortening instead of butter? ›

Baked goods made with shortening are typically softer and more tender than those made with butter. They also tend to be slightly taller, as it has a higher melting point and doesn't spread as much.

To maintain its shape during baking, pastry needs liquid to activate the flour's gluten. For flaky, tender texture, it also requires fat. The balance of those two ingredients is critical. Too much fat and the crust loses its structure and shrinks; too much liquid, it's hard and leathery.

What kind of flour makes the best pie crust? Well, not high-protein bread flour! Use that for your chewy bagels. What you want for pie is flour that yields a tender, flaky crust, which means medium-protein all-purpose flour or low-protein pastry flour.

Though the science is sketchy, a few professional pie bakers swear that it improves the texture of the crust, and they wouldn't dream of making pie dough without it. (Others swear by similarly acidic ingredients like lemon juice.) The acidic properties of vinegar inhibit gluten, some will say.

Keep the dough ingredients cool

The key to standard pie crust is having pockets of fat surrounded by flour. But if that fat starts to melt and mixes with the flour, it can start to develop gluten, which can lead to a tough crust. To prevent this, keep everything as cold as possible.

Once you've rolled out and folded your pie dough, those distinct bits of butter will steam as the dough bakes, creating the pockets of air that puff up into distinct layers. If the butter is too warm, it will combine too well into the flour, making the dough hard to work with and the final crust tough or cracker-like.

PIE DOUGH RULES

As important as not overmixing is staying chilled, literally!! That means keeping all elements cold— your counter, ingredients, hands, heart (just kidding!). No, but seriously, cut up your butter into little cubes and chill them before you incorporate them into the flour.

Traditionally, what you're looking for in a pie crust are three basic things: you want it to be fully cooked through, without any doughiness between the filling and the bottom crust, you want the crust to be light and flaky with discernible layers, and, of course, you want there to be a rich, buttery flavor.

The acidic properties of vinegar inhibit gluten, some will say. This theory proposes that once the water and flour are combined, gluten starts forming, causing the dough to grow tough. Adding an acid, the theory goes, stops the gluten in its tracks and rescues the crust from toughness.