All About Pastry

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Dear Cathy:
As a baker, you know that it is the fat in a pie crust which contributes to its rich taste, flakiness, and ability to hold all the ingredients together.
Hydrogenated fats are liquid plant oils are largely unsaturated (a good thing) but when hydrogen is added to them, they become artificially saturated so they can remain solid or semi-solid while at room temperature, making them easy to work into flour to make a dough.
Some nutritionists and physicians have now gone on record that hydrogenated oils have the same capacity to do harm to our hearts as saturated fats. Both can lead to clogging of the arteries, but hydrogenated fats do the dastardly deed faster.
One answer is a margarine made from non-hydrogenated vegetable oil (Spectrum Foods has one) or lightly chilled virgin coconut oils (avoid refrigerating coconut oil to a solid as it is near impossible to use.)
Coconut oil is gaining more favor these days and studies show that, although coconut oil and coconut milk are used heavily in Thai cuisine, the Thai people have a low rate of heart disease.
Both coconut oil and non-hydrogenated vegetable oils offer you alternatives to hydrogenated or animal fats, but you do sacrifice flakiness and, in the case of coconut oil, add a whisper of coconut flavor which is great if you like the fragrance and taste.

Consider this recipe:
6 Tablespoons of lightly chilled coconut oil,
¾ Cup chilled unsalted butter,
¼ Cup ice water combined with 2 ½ cups flour,
2 Tablespoons sugar,
1 Teaspoon of salt,
2 Teaspoons of apple cider vinegar (which helps to cut the fat).

Mix the ingredients lightly with a fork or your fingers until incorporated, then chill the dough in the refrigerator several hours before rolling it out for a pie crust.
Makes enough dough for two pie crusts.

Kim Severson published an article in the New York Times 2 years ago testing all the different variations on this topic. She experimented with a wide variety of fats from non-hydrogenated Crisco, (made largely from corn oil) to liquid butter (ghee) to solid butter and also forays into saturated fats like suet made from beef fat and leaf and other lards made from pork fat.
Her conclusion was: if you make pies sparingly and want the old fashioned flakiest, most tender crust; combine 70% pure butter with either 30% leaf lard or rendered suet.

(NOTE: Leaf lard is the fat that surrounds the kidneys of a pig. It's available online and at many ethnic markets, particularly Mexican markets. It must be rendered to use in pastry making. Suet is available from most butchers and is inexpensive; some butchers even give it away. Always discard suet and lard products in the garbage, not in a garbage disposal or down the drain.)

Combinations of oils and butter or all butter were tested, with all-butter recipes a clear favorite for crisp, flaky and sweet flavor and oils were a bust whether olive, canola, or grape seed, or ghee (clarified butter.) Even coconut oil flunked her test as none of these oils created her benchmark flaky crust. One possibility to explore is nut butters combined with regular butter. The result is a cookie-like crust and whether mixed-nut butter, peanut, hazelnut, cashew, or almond butters were used, they provided the added benefit of nutty fragrance and taste.

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