Is Butter Better? Choosing the Right Fat for Pie Crust - CIA Foodies (2024)

FAQs

Is Butter Better? Choosing the Right Fat for Pie Crust - CIA Foodies? ›

Butter is prized for its sweet, rich flavor and is our preferred fat for pie crust recipes, but its low melting point and overall makeup can make it difficult to work with. Unlike shortening or lard, butter is not 100% fat. It contains on average 80% butterfat, 10 to 16% water, and a small percentage of milk solids.

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.

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. Other fats, even though they have great pros, lack flavor,” De Sa Martins said.

You may have wondered why we use butter rather than margarine at Carême Pastry as the preferred fat for our premium 'French' style puff pastry and shortcrust pastry. Well, it's because butter produces superior quality pastry with a lovely flaky texture, more richness, better flavour, and impressive lift.

This is no accident but the result of a lot of trial and error! So here you go, here's how to make your perfect pastry! A combination of butter and shortening or margarine are used here. Using the 50/50 mix of these 2 fats helps give a balance of flavour and texture that is just right and not overpowering.

Cold unsalted butter – Supplies the pie crust's unbeatable flavor and flaky texture. Use unsalted butter.

The pie dough isn't given enough time to relax and chill

The pie crust could have a firm or tough texture if you bake your pie before resting your dough. Giving your dough time to rest will allow all the ingredients to chill, help the moisture distribute more evenly throughout the dough, and make it easier to roll out.

Butter is prized for its sweet, rich flavor and is our preferred fat for pie crust recipes, but its low melting point and overall makeup can make it difficult to work with. Unlike shortening or lard, butter is not 100% fat. It contains on average 80% butterfat, 10 to 16% water, and a small percentage of milk solids.

Similar to the shortening crust, the lard also produced a flat, crumbly pastry with noticeable greasiness. This one fared slightly better in the test because the lard provided more flavor than the shortening, with just a hint more richness.

Oil and margarine are the two most common fats used to make pie crust.

Can butter be substituted for Crisco in pie crust? ›

butter. You shouldn't have any issue when substituting butter for shortening here. A piecrust made with butter or margarine won't be as flaky as one made with shortening. If you're a fan of flaky, you may not want to substitute butter for shortening in piecrust.

Too much butter in your baked goods would give them different texture (flat, greasy..).

A little leakage is fine, but if you find that you are getting pools of butter, it is likely that you have not incorporated the butter well enough. Pie dough is cracking when you go to roll it out. This could be because it is too cool, or your dough is under hydrated.

But the apple pie takes the cake when it comes to fiber and potassium, and it has less added sugar. So what's a pie aficionado to do? Well, if you want to consume fewer calories, go for the pumpkin—it almost always has fewer because of the single crust. You could also take a sliver of both pies.

Oil pie crusts are easy to work with because, unlike butter, the fat is already melted. This means that it incorporates into the flour more easily than a solid fat does. The end result is still a flaky, delicious, and satisfyingly rich crust.

Butter: This is the queen of fats, not so much because of its ability to make a flaky pastry, but because it adds so much flavor and richness. Grocery coolers are stocked with sweet cream butter, but that doesn't mean it's been sweetened, only that it's made from pure cream.

Pie and tart doughs have so much butter in them that they almost self-grease as they bake. The butter melts and turns into steam and browns the bottoms making them crispy. If you add more grease into that situation, the texture of your pie crust may change in the oven. So you definitely don't want to overdo it.

It's really important to prevent forcefully packing your cup with flour or try to push more flour into it, as that will impact the end result. Butter: With many pie crust recipes calling for shortening, we prefer an all butter crust. It may just be a personal preference, but you really can't beat 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.

Some say that scattering small bits of butter over a fruit filling keeps the juices from bubbling over in the same way that adding a bit of fat to simmering jam keeps it from foaming up in the preserving pan. The theory is that the fat disrupts the formation of bubbles on the surface of the viscous fruit mixture.