With the upcoming holidays on the horizon you’ll be sure to find yourself entertaining family and friends with dietary restrictions. While some desserts can be hard to alter to fit certain dietary needs, pastry and pie dough is one that is super easy to make dairy-free and vegan. Below I’ve comprised a list of my favourite butter substitutes that can be used in pie dough to create easy and flakey perfection. These doughs can be used to make everything for a savoury pie, to a fruit pie, a chocolate tart, or anything in between.
Happy baking!
Vegan (dairy free) Pie Dough
Olive Oil
My mum’s go to, using olive oil yields a slightly mealy but tasty dough. Because of the savoury nature of this dough I love to use it in main dishes––think mushroom pot pie, tomato tart, or roasted veggie hand pies.
1 cup flour
½ teaspoon sea salt
¼ cup olive oil
2 tbsp. dairy free milk
- Combine the flour and sea salt together in a bowl.
- Next combine the oil and milk in a smaller bowl.
- Pour the liquid into the dry and mix just until combined.
- Use the dough right away, rolling between two pieces of floured parchment paper. No need to chill!
Vegan Shortening/ Vegan Butter
I like to sub vegan butter or a Spectrum like shortening for butter in a one-to-one ratio to typical butter but because they tend to be salty, I never add the salt called for in the recipe. My favourite recipe for this type of dough is
1 ¼ cups flour
1 tablespoon unrefined cane sugar
½ cup vegan shortening or butter
½ cup cold Water with two ice cubes and 1 tbsp. vodka or apple cider vinegar
- Combine the flour and sugar in a bowl. With your finger tips work in the vegan shortening/or butter until small pieces, no larger than a pea-size.
- In a small bowl combine the cold water, ice, and apple cider or vodka. Slowly add a tsp. of this mixture to the flour, gently tossing to combine, until the flour is just starting to come together as a pastry.
- Form this pastry into a disk and wrap it in plastic wrap or a reusable alternative, and refrigerate for a couple of hours. The dough is ready in about 4-6 hours.
Classic Shortening
By this I mean Crisco, which as a vegan I’ve learned to love because it is more affordable than the fancy vegan shortenings. Like the vegan shortening about, I use this in a one-to-one ratio for butter in a pastry. Because Crisco is not salty, I usually add ½ tsp. sea salt to the recipe above.
Coconut Oil
Coconut oil is a pantry staple that most of us have on hand–– which makes it a great fat to use in everyday pastry or impromptu bakeoffs. While the texture can yield a dough a little tougher than shortening, it is still utterly delicious and an easy recipe to toss together.
1 ¼ cups flour
1 tablespoon unrefined cane sugar
⅓ cup coconut oil (solid but not hard room temperature solid is best)
½ cup cold Water with two ice cubes and 1 tbsp. vodka or apple cider vinegar
½ tsp. sea salt
Follow the same instructions as the vegan butter recipe but like the olive oil dough there is no need to chill before use.
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