Homemade Vegan Pie Crust Recipe | Aline Made (2024)

FAQs

What are 2 disadvantages of using all butter in pie crust? ›

The cons: Butter can be harder to work with than lard or shortening because of its lower melting point, so the dough temperature has to be just right. If it gets too warm, it will be too soft to handle and will tear easily. Butter is a firmer fat, so if it's too cold, your dough will be more difficult to roll out.

#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.

Start with chilled ingredients

Butter creates a sturdy, crisp pie crust. For this, it is important to keep all ingredients cold which will inhibit the development of gluten in the flour. Use butter right out of the refrigerator and add ice-cold water to make the dough.

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.

The Pie Crust Takeaways

This time, though, there was one very clear victor. 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.

Vegetable Shortening

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.

Whether you use a food processor, a stand mixer, or your hands to incorporate the ingredients together, overmixing is a common mistake that leads to a chewy crust. It's tempting when baking to combine the ingredients completely, but the texture should resemble a coarse meal before adding your liquid.

Water, however, is absorbed much less easily into flour proteins when the temperature is colder. That's why purists recommend cold ingredients, cold equipment and marble boards. Keeping the butter cold also helps when making short crust pastry because it doesn't melt into the flour when you are working it in.

In order to ensure that the finished crust is super flaky, pie crust always starts with cold butter. That way, the butter will remain in solid chunks in the dough that evaporate into layers during baking. Good!

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.

Why put egg yolk in pie crust? ›

Sugar: Not all pie crusts have sugar, but those that do will be more tender since sugar interferes with gluten development. In our experience, sugar can also make the pie dough so tender that it's hard to roll out and transfer to your pan without breaking. Egg: This makes the dough more pliable and easy to roll out.

Adding more flour is always an option, but add too much flour and your dough will end up like a cracker—not a pie crust. Remember: The more you mix your pie dough, the tougher it becomes. To keep the mixing to a minimum, try rolling out your dough between two pieces of parchment paper.

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.

Chill in the fridge for 30 minutes, or up to overnight. Tip: Chilling hardens the fat in the dough, which will help the crust maintain its structure as it bakes. And the short rest before rolling relaxes the dough's gluten, helping prevent a tough crust.

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.

Too much butter will result in a very soft, sticky dough that's difficult to shape, and bakes up greasy and dense.

As the dough is baked, the butter melts and creates steam, trapping it in the dough and creating air pockets. Once the dough has cooled, these air pockets become delicate layers of flaky dough. By this point, you've realized that butter adds more than flavor—it develops texture.

The secret to making the best pie crust is to coat a portion of the flour with cold butter before adding in the rest of your flour. This simple step guarantees a super flaky, light pie crust.