Can various fats be used as a strict substitute for pastry dough?
If you take the three main types of fats used for puff pastry. Lard, butter and margarine, can they be used interchangeable or is there caveats between the three? I found a nice recipe for puff pastry that uses butter but I want to use marge for a vegan option.
Best Answer
Apart from flavour, the two main issues you might encounter when substituting margarine for butter are:
- Different fat content. There are margarines explicitly produced and marketed as low-fat options. For baking, you do not want these. As butter usually/always (depending on your location) has a fat content of 80%, you want to substitute an ingredient with a similar makeup.
- Different kinds of fat. Margarine is made with vegetable oils, which contain less saturated fats than butter does. As a rule, saturated fats are more solid than unsaturated fats at the same temperature, which might lead to more 'melting' when substituting margarine for butter. However, margarine contains stabilisers making it more or less behave like butter; it is hard to predict how these will behave when baking, though.
You will probably be fine substituting full-fat margarine for butter, but if you want to err on the side of caution, my advice would be to look for a recipe that uses margarine.
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What can I use instead of pastry dough?
6 creative pie crust alternatives, because sometimes, life's too short for rolling out dough.- Cookie Crumb Pie Crust. Making crusts from cookie crumbs is a classic baking hack. ...
- Phyllo Dough Pie Crust. ...
- Rice Pie Crusts. ...
- Saltine Pie Crust. ...
- Cookie Dough Pie Crust. ...
- Store-Bought Pie Crust.
Which fats are suitable for making pastry?
27 Major Fats and Oils Used in BakeriesFat typeSaturated (g/100 g)Monounsaturated (g/100 g)Lard40.843.8Duck fat33.249.3Butter54.019.8Coconut oil85.26.611 more rowsWhat is the best kind of fats to be used in making pastry dough Why?
The pros: Butter has the best flavor and it forms light, lofty, flaky layers in pie crust. 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.How does different fats affect baking?
Because different types of triclygerides behave differently in baking. Triglycerides high in saturated fat tend to come from animals and are solid at room temperature, like butter or lard. Triglycerides high in unsaturated fats usually come from plants and are liquid at room temperature, like vegetable oil.Functions of fat in baking | Cake Chemistry
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