Here's How To Bake Pie Crust With Vegan Butter
There are a lot of reasons to go vegan, even if you don't commit 24/7. Unfortunately, not only can options be limited when dining out, but newly vegan home cooks might find cooking without animal products challenging. This is especially true of baking, a sometimes unforgiving culinary art that can closely revolve around butter and other animal goods.
Take a pie crust, for example, which comes out flaky and delicious thanks to the rich, creamy butter that went into the raw dough. Obviously, dairy butter is a no-go for vegan pie crust. Shortening is good for a variety of vegan baked goods, but won't give you the airy flakiness of a picture-perfect pie crust, unfortunately.
A good vegan butter will be a suitable replacement for dairy butter in pie crust. However, as with non-vegan cooking, you must begin with excellent ingredients to get excellent results. A pie crust is a simple thing with few places for shortcuts to hide, so starting with a truly quality vegan butter — and a splash of water — is essential.
Why a good vegan butter is important for vegan pie crust
The key to a good vegan butter for pie crust is a vegan butter that tastes good on its own. Compared to shortening, vegan butters have lactic acid added to them which creates a more complex flavor profile closer to that of dairy butter. Vegan butter also has water in it, which creates flakes in the crust when it evaporates during baking.
Vegan butters often have a lower melting point than dairy butter, too, so you'll want to keep the vegan butter cold as you mix your dough. Freeze your vegan butter in cubes to keep it as cool as possible during the mixing process, and consider using a stand mixer to keep the heat of your hands from warming the dough.
While mixing, slowly add a combination of cold water and apple cider vinegar (a useful ingredient in vegan and non-vegan baking) to maintain consistency and add depth to the flavor profile. Some recipes also call for dissolving sugar in this liquid, which will enrich the toasted brown color on your final product, but it's optional.