Homemade Vegan Pie Crust Recipe | Aline Made (2024)

FAQs

What is vegan pie crust made of? ›

To make the dough:

Add the flour, salt and sugar into a large bowl and whisk to combine. Cut the vegetable shortening into cubes and scatter into the flour. Use a fork or pastry cutter to slice the vegetable shortening into the flour until you reach a crumbly texture.

The number one tip most pie dough recipes will emphasize is using cold butter, cold water, cold hands—really cold everything. The colder the butter (or shortening) stays in the dough, the more it can stay self-contained until it hits the oven, creating bigger pockets of air.

Egg: The egg in this recipe acts as a binder that allows for a flakier, more delicate crust. It also binds all of your ingredients together so that you can roll out your pie dough without it breaking apart.

A: First, don't just reach for more flour—too much extra flour will make the crust tough, and won't treat the real problem, which is that your butter is too soft. I recently read in Weller's cookbook A Good Bake that it should take no more than one to two minutes to roll out a pie crust.

Olive oil is great when used for crusts for vegan pot pies, biscuits and herb breads. If your recipe calls for 1 cup of butter, use ¾ cups of olive oil.

SHORTENING

Like margarine, it can be used in a 1:1 substitution for butter. The solid fat form of shortening doesn't completely mix with dry ingredients when it's cut into them; this creates marbling in dough, resulting in light, flaky pie crusts and biscuits.

But there are two much more important perks to using vinegar: it provides a little insurance against overworking the dough. And, that splash of vinegar will keep your dough from oxidizing and turning gray. Fresh All-Butter Pie Dough with vinegar (right) and without (left).

The pros: Butter has the best flavor. A butter pie crust forms light, lofty, flaky layers while it bakes. The flakiness comes partially from the water content of butter, which evaporates as the pie bakes and turns to steam, separating and puffing up the layers in dough.

According to David Joachim, author of The Food Substitutions Bible, the very best substitute for egg wash is milk or heavy cream. Simply brush the baked good with 1 tablespoon of milk or heavy cream for every ¼ cup of egg wash the recipe calls for.

Some bakers use milk or buttermilk in their pie crust. Thanks to their milk solids, both will help crust brown and add a bit of tenderness. But the classic liquid in pie crust is water — ice water, to be precise.

Can you use butter instead of egg on a pie? ›

Butter gives baked goods the same golden, crispy finish as egg wash, with the added benefit of tasting like, well, butter. To proceed, first melt the butter over low heat—being careful not to brown it—and then use a pastry brush to sparingly apply an even layer to the soon-to-be-baked item.

The pie dough isn't given enough time to relax and chill

The pie crust could have a firm or tough texture if you bake your pie before resting your dough. Giving your dough time to rest will allow all the ingredients to chill, help the moisture distribute more evenly throughout the dough, and make it easier to roll out.

1. 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.

Overworking pie dough

You should always stick to kneading your pie dough just enough so that the flour and the butter are combined, but not so much so that your dough becomes elastic and hard to work. In hindsight, the easiest way to fix an overworked pie crust is to prevent overworking it in the first place.

Often times, pizza dough is naturally vegan. The basic pizza dough formula is just water, flour, yeast, and salt. The only times that eggs or dairy are used for a bread recipe is typically just for enriched doughs (like brioche or cinnamon rolls– which we have the vegan options for on the blog!).

The Pillsbury Refrigerated Pie Crust, for example, consists of enriched wheat flour, water, lard, and a blend of vegetable oils (soybean and hydrogenated cottonseed). It's important to note that lard, derived from animal fat, makes this particular pie crust unsuitable for vegans.

Vegan butter is a non-dairy butter substitute made from plant-based ingredients. It is typically made from a blend of vegetable oils such as coconut, palm, or soybean and other natural ingredients such as nuts, seeds, and even algae. This makes it a great alternative for those who: Follow a vegan diet.