I subbed butter for shortening.

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I made a pumpkin pie yesterday and made my own pie crust but I used butter in place of shortening in the recipe and the end result was thick and gummy and I was wondering if the using butter messed it up?? Here is the recipe:

2 C flour
3/4 C shortening (I used butter)
1/2 C ice water
1/4 tsp salt

I processed the cubed cold butter with the flour and salt and then slowly added the water until it formed a loose dough. Dumped it on some plastic wrap and chilled over night until I needed it the next day. It was really hard to roll out and like I said it was really thick and gummy.
 
Butter will act differently than shortening, but it will work fine in a pie crust usually. My guess is that the butter was over processed and mixed with the flour instead of staying in separate little bits.
 
Butter and shortening cannot be exchanged equally in recipes that are sensitive to the amount of water in them. Pie crust is one. Good shortening (Crisco) has no water. 12 grams of Crisco has 12 grams of fat. U.S. common butter typically has about 81 percent fat. European butter has more like 85%. And butter contains water. By directly substituting, you got less fat and added water, and I suspect the water did most of the damage. When water is a critical factor, and I want to use butter, I melt it and simmer away much of the water.

If you happened to follow the recent posted link to the America's Test Kitchen ginger snap recipe, you will have seen that the butter is simmered until it starts to brown. It removes much of the water to make the snaps drier and gives the snaps the browned butter flavor.

There are butter-only pie crusts, but dealing with the added water can be tricky, and it's easily removed.
 
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