l, not -l wrote:
> On 2-Jan-2009, Dave Smith > wrote:
>
>> l, not -l wrote:
>>
>>> Replace the butter with butter flavored shortening; real butter contains
>>> 15-18% water. When you bake the crust, the water evaporates; shortening
>>> is
>>> pretty much nothing but fat and won't evaporate.
>>
>> That doesn't make a heck of a lot of sense to me. I appreciate that you
>> have to compensate for the liquid content of butter, margarine,
>> vegetable shortening or lard, but you add liquid to the dough mix. For
>> instant, the (Crisco) recipe that I use calls for 1 cup of shortening to
>> two cups of flour and then an egg, 2 Tblsp. water and 1 Tblsp vinegar.
>> That's 3 Tbsp. of liquid, plus the moisture in the egg.
>
> Did you use less water when you substituted butter for Crisco? If not, by
> using butter, you increased the liquid beyond what the recipe calls for.
> The flour can take on only so much liquid. All I know for sure is, butter
> has a lot more water in it than Crisco; if I were to substitute one for the
> other, I'd adjust the amount of other water introduced to adjust for that
> difference.

I believe that I mentioned compensating for the moisture in butter, but
I was questioning that the moisture in butter caused the shrinkage
problem since most pie dough recipes call for water.