The Betty Crocker 1950 Picture Cookbook pastry recipe uses only shortening and no butter.
But, as I've explained here, while a crust made without butter is very tender, it is also less flavorful and often too delicate to get a clean slice out of the pie pan. So I use a half shortening half butter combo.
The good thing about having shortening in the crust is it's a lot less fussy.
But if you are using butter it's still good to have that butter as cold as possible when you add it to the flour.
Dicing that butter without letting it heat up to room temperature can be a challenge - especially in warm weather.
So here's my trick for dicing butter into small pieces quickly without too much fuss.
1) Make a lengthwise cut with a sharp knife in the stick of cold butter. I do this right on the wrapper.
2) Flip the butter over and make another lengthwise cut that intersects the first cut and creates quarters.
3) Cut a small slice (about 1/8 inch) off the end of the stick and place it on the secret weapon - an egg slicer - to turn your butter pat into nice tiny cubes. This works best if you push the butter through the slicer right over the bowl of flour and directly into the mixture.
4) Repeat until all butter is diced.
Using this trick will give you nice small pieces of butter in no time at all!
If you want to learn more about pie and pastry and the Back To Betty project (baking my way through the Betty Crocker 1950 picture cookbook) choose the category "Back To Betty" over in the right hand sidebar.
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