Butter or Shortening?

My first memory of making pastry is from when I was about 12 years old.  We had cooking class at school and we were making apple pie.  The recipe is the only one that I have used for shortcrust pastry since then,   well with one exception, which I will talk about in a minute.  The recipe is very simple.  2 cups all purpose flour, 1 cup butter, a pinch of salt, and enough ice water to bring the pastry together. that's it.  Chill for an hour or so and voila, enough shortcrust pastry for a double crust pie.

The exception that I mentioned, happened just a couple of weeks ago.  I was making a recipe (which shall remain nameless) from this very site.  The recipe called for making pastry using half butter and half shortening.  I decided on a whim to actually follow the recipe lol.  Made the pastry according to directions.  Put it in the fridge to chill.  Rolled out the pastry and disaster.  Every time I tried to pick up the pastry to turn it or to continue with the next part of the recipe the pastry tore.  Didn't matter how much flour I used or whether I chilled it longer, no way was I going to be able to use this pastry.  I even put it back into the fridge overnight.  The disaster still tore  every time I tried to move it.    Luckily, I still had enough butter in the fridge to make my old standby. 

Apple Pie with All Butter Shortcrust Pastry.

This pastry can also be used for savory pies.  This is AllRecipes Steak and Irish Stout Pie

So as you can see, it is butter all the way from me. You can find some really good recipes using butter at this site:  http://goboldwithbutter.supranet.net/

 I am an Allrecipes Allstar Brand Ambassador(a voluntary position) and I’m not compensated for my work with Allrecipes.com. Products received from advertiser are only used for experienced-based reviews on AllRecipes.com - Thoughts from my Kitchen. The reviews, content and opinions expressed in this blog are purely the sole opinions of me, pelicangal aka Jan Elton