Hi all: Lately I have seen many dessert recipes that advocate shortening as the fat of choice. I generally use butter in my baking unless something calls for another fat to be used in it's place. What's the deal? Does shotening give a particular texture or shudder....flavour? I have been looking at my grandmother's old cookbooks lately so maybe it is a war time ecconomy to substitute shortening as the fat. I particularly wonder about biscuits and cookies. Is there ever a time when shortening is the preferred fat to use in baking .... other than pies?
First off, butter is a shortening as is lard, vegetable shortening and other fats. However people often incorrectly use the term shortening to refer to vegetable shortening like Crisco. I think the big difference is that vegetable shortenings have a more neutral flavor than either butter or lard. Some might think of it as 'lighter'. Personally, I'm a lard guy and use it just about whenever a recipe calls for shortening.
Shortening and butter are fats that are both suitable for baking.Generally butter is desired for its flavor, but shortening is selected for good processing performance.
Shortenings from an institutional perspective; is rather specialized material that can be tailored to suits ones needs if one is willing to order in enormous bulk quantities. There are a cake shortening, cake mix shortening,icing shortening,pie shortening, Danish pastry shortening,puff paste shortening, biscuit shortening, frying shortening ,fluid shortenings for breads and cakes etc.. It is also the same with industrial margarines which can have cake margarine, pastry margarine etc. It is not the same anyway with household materials where you can have few choices of fats for your applications as dictated of what is available in the groceries.
Shortening being made industrially was designed as the fat that can provide the best performance in many baking applications but with least flavour affects (usually bland).But the shortening that is easily available to consumers is a general purpose material and in my experience and opinion is not the best material for a particular application ;but just satisfactory. So if you had in mind superior flavour and had been happy with butter then do not change anything that may affect your sensory expectation for the products you are used to. However if you think that you want to see the difference in performance then feel free to use any alternative fat that is (from what you hear) to give the best results. I also do this if I want to check the difference and satisfy my curiosity. I realized then that ; For example is real lard(animal fat) is best for pie making;it cannot be replaced with butter . Regarding texture that has something to do with the particular crystalline form of fat (as well as the melting point ) that is used in certain application. For example in pies: The beta crystalline state of lard provides superior flakiness and other quality characteristics that are desirable for pie making but lousy for cakes .Meanwhile butter is a blend of beta prime and beta crystalline state and the fat being in emulsion form(fat and water) easily break down during some food processing operation like creaming,frying, etc and not stable enough at most food processing temperatures.It does not give the best results in cake texture and volume but just satisfactory. The saving grace is the unique flavour of butter that it imparts to the baked food. The common all purpose shortening is mostly beta prime crystalline state and produce the better cakes but with a bland flavour.The same fat can be used for pie making and you can get a better pie crust than if you are using butter as it has a higher melting point so you can still create satisfactory flakiness than if you are using the dairy fat.Therefore common all purposed shortening is a versatile fat for baking application and better performance than butter.
If you are looking for the institutional products, then you are absolutely right;but in home setting the hobbyist have many choices and can use from butter, shortening, margarine and even pork lard.This fats variation can affect the flavour of the end products Many recipes(including cookies and cakes) nowadays recommend shortening as the fat of choice,.But there was never a certain time that it was the preferred fat. It also depends how the recipe formulator prepared the recipe as dictated by his or her own preference and prejudices about ingredients.And the reader of the recipe was also affected by the recipe developers preference for a certain fat. Cooks and bakers can have their own cherished opinion about what is the best fat for their recipes but the reasoning is still about flavour or performance.
Shortening (by which you no doubt mean Crisco - hydrogenated vegetable shortening) will definitely lead to a lighter, puffier texture in cookies and cakes. However, as you suspect, it does lead to a different flavour, in this case, a bland, greasy, pasty flavour. Compared to butter in most baked goods, the flavour is most unappealing. In addition, you can achieve the same light, puffy texture, if that's what you're after, in these products simply by increasing the egg ratio slightly. So in cakes and cookies, in fact virtually anything that calls for eggs as well, there's no reason not to use butter.
There can be little doubt that widespread use of shortening got a big boost from the war. I think, however, that its use in commercial baking would still have been very common without the war, because shortening is so much cheaper than butter and most commercial operations prioritize low cost. Only the narrow proportion of bakeries operating in the "luxury" market niche can get by with pricing their wares sufficiently high as to make butter an economically viable option.
Even in pies, vegetable shortening isn't really the best choice. Here, if the objective is flaky tenderness, the champion is lard, which will, far and away, yield the most flaky results. OTOH, lard crusts can have their own flavour as well, which to some is as equally off-putting as the vegetable shortening. I render my own lard from whole leaf lard I buy, because the brands commonly sold in bricks or tubs at the supermarkets are so unreliable in flavour.
What I've found works best in pies is a mix of half butter, half lard, which yields impossible tenderness and intense butteriness.
For biscuits, if you mean American biscuits, i.e. a form of breakfast or dinner pastry, the best choice is lard again. You can use the half lard, half butter option if you want, for a buttery flavour, although I don't think this is as desirable as in a pie.
Alex Rast snipped-for-privacy@nwnotlink.NOSPAM.com (remove d., .7, not, and .NOSPAM to reply)
As mentioned, there is a flavor difference between hydrogenated vegetable shortening like Crisco, and butter. Of course, flavor preferences are a personal thing and while I like butter, I'm sure that people who are accustomed to baked good made with shortening might prefer the shortening. Butter melts at body temperature and shortening remains solid. Therefore, shortening can leave a greasy coating in your mouth. I find this particularly unpleasant in high fat items like puff pastry that are made with vegetable shortening. Butter has not only a lower melting point, but it has a sharper melting profile than shortening. You can see this when you try to soften butter in a microwave oven. One minute it is a solid and then next it is completely melted. That make a big difference in the way cookies spread in the oven. Therefore, not only is there a flavor difference, but the choice of fat can change the quality of the final product. Butter tends to make thin, crisp cookies while vegetable shortening tends to make softer, thicker cookies.
I do think that shortenings where devised as a lower cost alternative to butter. There is a popular belief that vegetable shortening is healthier than butter, but that has been largely discredited. I think there is something psychologically appealing to some people about the pure, fluffy, sterile while appearance of vegetable shortening as opposed to butter. Manufactures like to promote an image of wholesome goodness that comes from corn and soybeans.
I agree that shortening isn't the best fat for pie pastry. It may be preferred because it is the easiest to work with. You don't have to worry about it melting at warn room temperature. I like to use three parts butter (6 oz) to one part shortening (2 oz) when making pie pastry. This combination give flavorful, flaky pastry that is still easy to work with.
I believe shortening used to mean lard, as opposed to butter.
And, I believe that, in general, lard makes for better pastries. Or, it does if the recipe was an older one that was tuned for lard.
Butter is a shortening, too, as is 'vegetable' shortening like Crisco.
I don't bake pastries much, but speaking generally again, Crisco or lard makes for better pie crusts than does butter.
While the butter flavor is a welcome addition of 'richness' in many recipes, the flakiness and neutral flavor you get from lard or Crisco is often thought of as an advantage.
One of the major marketing points for Crisco and other shortenings when they were first introduced was that they were kosher and pareve, so observant Jews could use them with either meat or dairy products. Actually, manufacturers in the early days of shortening and margarine were forbidden to add coloring lest they resemble butter too much. Little packets of food color (beta-carotene or annatto) used to come with margarine in the 1940's to color it, if the consumer wished.
Nowadays there's another reason not to use shortening. The trans fatty acids that are produced when oil is hydrogenated are even more of a risk factor for heart disease than the saturated fat in butter. You may have read in the last week or two that food manufacturers will have to provide trans fatty acid information on food labels in the next 2 years.
My mother has always used the oil and milk pie crust recipe from the old Betty Crocker cookbook. She gets good results with it--the crusts aren't as greasy as the ones my students made in foods lab years ago. (They were horrified that lard could be used in pie crust--so much so that the next semester the professor removed lard from the fats to be used in that lab. The way that lab was rigged, I always felt the subtitle should be, "Homage to Crisco.") I never had much success with pie crusts until I started using the food processor to mix them. I use butter, since I'm not going to buy shortening for just one recipe.
This is not true. The FDA says they are similarly harmful.
Also, most people don't understand the fact that everything that makes fat makes trans-fat. There's trans-fat in your soybean oil and trans-fat in your butter. Just not very much. The concern has been over the fact that consumers are left wondering just how much. New labeling requirements will help that.
Now, if you could just convince the FDA to require labeling of more than just triglycerides as 'fat' we'd really be getting somewhere.
Yeah, you are right . I do not see this trans things affects my appetite as well as other food related scares. BTW, I am always formulating, cooking and eating foods anyway laden with food additives. Having anything to eat when you are hungry is better than rejecting always any food item because of perceived risks that health conscious freaks worry about. I would rather eat a food laden with E numbers than starve.
InspirePoint website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.