Traditional Art of the Pie All-Butter Dough Recipe | Sur La Table (2024)

FAQs

What happens if I use salted butter instead of unsalted pie crust? ›

Salted butter has a saltier taste, which can cloud the taste of your baked goods. When you want to have complete control over the flavor in your recipe, you want to use unsalted butter. When you control the salt, you control the flavor of the finished product.

3. A brush of butter (and maybe a sprinkle of cookie crumbs) adds moisture and texture. Since store-bought pie crusts have a tendency to dry out, our experts suggest using a moistening agent to imbue the crust with texture and flavor.

It is an unsweetened pastry typically used in savory dishes, though sweet dishes are known. The name "pâte brisée" translates to "broken pastry" in English, which refers to the crumbly or mealy texture of the dough.

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. If you've had problems with your pie crust recipe, chances are the butter's to blame. Here's how to keep it under control: Start with cold butter, straight from the fridge.

Regular butter contains some salt, and most recipes take this into account. But if you only have unsalted butter when the recipe calls for regular butter, you can add a ¼ teaspoon of salt for every stick or ½ cup of Challenge Unsalted Butter required.

Unsalted butter gives you complete control of the overall flavor of your recipe. This is especially important in certain baked goods where the pure, sweet cream flavor of butter is key (butter cookies or pound cakes). As it pertains to cooking, unsalted butter lets the real, natural flavor of your foods come through.

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.

Tough pie crusts are typically the result of working the dough too much (again, gluten). You don't need to make sure it's a perfectly uniform ball. “As long as the dough is mostly holding together, you don't need to spend a lot of time kneading it,” Susan Reid wrote for King Arthur Baking.

Another option is brushing with melted butter as a finishing touch. Is it better to use an egg wash or butter on your pie crust? We are Team Egg Wash (or Cream Wash). While melted butter adds more flavor than the washes, it is less effective in look; it gives a speckled appearance to pastry.

Both are made with flour and butter, but the proportion of butter is higher in puff pastry and the technique for making it is different.

What is the difference between pâte brisée and pie crust? ›

Pie crust can be made with various fats such as butter or vegetable shortening, but pâte brisée is always made with butter. Also, pâte brisée uses a higher ratio of butter to flour than an average pie crust. Another difference is that some pie crust recipes include sugar.

A simple equation to remember: 3 parts flour; 2 parts fat; and 1 part water.

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.

Why does butter leak out of my pie crust? If a lot of butter is leaking from your pie crust, that means that the dough was too warm when you put it in the oven. It's important to keep butter cold when making your pie crust dough and to keep your pie dough cold right up until the moment it goes into the oven.

“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. “The more flavorful the butter, the more flavor your pie crust will have,” Huntsberger added.

When using salted butter in baking, it's important to keep in mind that it may impact the final taste of the product as it contains added salt. It's recommended to either reduce the amount of salt in the recipe by a 1/4 teaspoon or omit it completely. The amount of butter used in the recipe should not be changed.

YES! I do, all the time. Unsalted butter works too, however I prefer it to be saltier tasting because it compliments sweet pie filling so well!

Salted butter is good in savory things like biscuits and pie crust. Salt content varies by brand, so be careful if using salted butter in cake or cookies.