Select image above to see step-by-step demonstration. Full available formulas on page two of this article.

For many people, pie conjures images of home and comfort. Pie dough traditionally was made with either lard, all-purpose vegetable shortening or both.

Lard produces a flakier pie crust than all-purpose vegetable shortening because it has water locked inside the fat. This water is released during baking, creating steam that lifts the layers of the dough apart for a flaky crust. Lard also has a very tenderizing effect on gluten in a pie crust. All-purpose shortening, made from partially hydrogenated vegetable oils, produces less flaky, but still tender, crusts.

Butter would seem to be a good option, as it creates the same flaky effect as lard in other products, but its high water content renders it better suited for laminated doughs than pie doughs. Excess water released during baking over-develops gluten in pie dough, which works against flakiness and tenderness.

The best lard was clean rendered, not hydrogenated, and it contained no preservatives. It had great flavor and was easy to work with. Unfortunately, healthful food trends in the 1980s precipitated a skewed consumer view of saturated fats. Today, lard elicits negative perceptions in many consumers.

Trim the edges using a dough knife with an outward slant.

All-purpose vegetable shortening did not share lard's stigma, making it an obvious replacement. Shortening has no water, is plastic-like and nearly flavorless, but makes a tender, somewhat flaky pie crust. Plus, all-purpose shortenings were inexpensive and had a long shelf life. It became the standard fat for pie crusts—until consumers started to worry about trans fats. Studies in the last five years have shown dietary trans fatty acids to increase LDL (bad) cholesterol and decrease HDL (good) cholesterol. This information blacklisted all-purpose shortening as an ingredient for a small, but growing, segment of the population.

Pie dough formulas using all-purpose vegetable shortening are based on the ratio of 3-2-1. Bakers used 3 lbs. of pastry flour, 2 lbs. of vegetable shortening and 1 lb. of ice water (with 1 oz. of salt dissolved in the ice water). This makes good, classic pie dough, and was the industry standard for years. Today, we are seeing a shift to no-trans alternatives in shortening due to legislation banning trans fats.

Why did bakers use hydrogenated vegetable oils to begin with? Bakers needed less expensive baking fats that performed like butter. Margarine is a good example of a shortening created to mimic butter, managing to create liquid oils in a solid state. Saturating liquid oils with hydrogen creates the solid shortening structure. The melting point of these oils is very high. Fully hydrogenated oils are generally very hard and have melting points of 140°F to 160°F, depending on the source oils. If soybean oil is fully hydrogenated, for example, its melting point is 150°F.

The resulting shortening has no trans fats because all remaining unsaturated or double bonds will have been saturated. But this shortening is so hard at room temperature that it would be next to impossible to make workable, smooth pie dough. To make pie dough workable, shortening manufacturers blended in partially hydrogenated oils to make the shortening less solid at cool temperatures. The result was all-purpose shortening, which is a functional shortening for bakery items, but may contain about 30 percent trans fat.

To comply with trans fat-related legislation, bakers are turning to non-hydrogenation. Shortening manufacturers start with naturally saturated oils before processing. One such oil is palm oil. Palm oil can function as a shortening by itself or it can be blended with domestic oils, such as soy or canola, to make non-hydrogenated shortenings with specific attributes. To make the resulting non-hydrogenated shortening workable, manufacturers blend without having to fully hydrogenate these oils. In the provided trans fat-free pie dough formula, the shortening is a non-genetically modified, soft, palm/soy, expeller pressed blend, which contains less than 0.5 percent trans fats. A traditional pie dough formula using all-purpose shortening is provided for comparison. No non-hydrogenated shortenings may contain more than 0.5 percent trans fat per serving and still claim zero trans fat. Palm/soy blends are the most popular non-hydrogenated blends in U.S. bakeries. (Crust and filling formulas on following page)