Pie crust is essentially fat + flour + water (plus a dash of salt), but how you combine those ingredients can make all the difference in the outcome of your pie. Pie people—that is, people (like me) who are obsessed with making pie—have been debating exactly what to use and how to use it for decades (maybe even centuries) and there are almost as many opinions about how to make pie as there are pie-crust recipes. In pie making, you might think picking the filling is the hardest decision, but the fat you use greatly impacts the slice of pie you're about to enjoy, too.
Let me break it down for you, one fat at a time:
1. Lard
When you think of a lard-based pie crust, you might imagine an old homestead, with an elderly woman cutting rendered fat from a dearly departed pig into hand-milled flour. But lard is a perfectly good fat to use for pie crust in the present day—if you can find rendered leaf lard (made from the high-quality fat around the kidneys and loin of the pig), the only kind of lard I would recommend for pie making.
The pros: Lard produces an extremely crisp, flaky crust. It's also easy to work with, as its melting point is higher than butter, so it doesn't soften as quickly while you handle it, or threaten to dissolve into the flour as quickly as butter before baking.
The cons: Good quality rendered leaf lard is hard to find. Much of the lard widely available in grocery stores has been hydrogenated and filled with preservatives, with a strong piggy flavor, which makes baking with it considerably less desirable than an all-butter crust.
If you are looking for a combination of lard and butter, which some people feel combines the best of both worlds, try this recipe from Alice Waters:
2. Shortening
Vegetable shortening is a solid, usually hydrogenated fat made from vegetable oil, such as palm, cottonseed, or soybean oil. It became popular in the 1950s as a cheap, shelf-stable alternative to butter. If you want to make a vegan pie crust, shortening is one option (though we recommend using the newer, non-hydrogenated varieties).
