The day I picked butter over shortening for my pie crust and never looked back

I was getting ready for the county fair pie contest last fall and had to finally make a call between my grandma's old shortening recipe and the all butter crust I'd been reading about. She swore by Crisco for flakiness but I kept ending up with crusts that felt a little greasy and sort of... bland. So I went with butter, used 2 sticks of cold Kerrygold cut into cubes, and worked it into the flour until it looked like cornmeal with some pea sized chunks. The dough was harder to handle, kept cracking on me, but after 30 minutes chilling it rolled out smooth enough. That pie took second place and the judge wrote "best flavor" on the comment card. Now I'm wondering if anyone else made the switch and had trouble with the dough being too fragile at first.

2 comments

2 Comments

fisher.adam29d ago

Yes the dough is a pain but the flavor payoff is SO worth it.

lopez.karen29d ago

I mean, "SO worth it"? Idk, I've made that dough a few times and yeah it's good but it's not like life changing or anything. Maybe it's just me but I feel like people build it up way too much. The flavor is fine, but there are plenty of other recipes that taste just as good without making you want to throw your mixer out the window. I'd rather have a decent bread I can actually enjoy making than spend three hours fighting with sticky dough for a subtle difference. Honestly sometimes I wonder if it's more about the bragging rights than the actual taste.