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What would be the difference in using oil, shortening, or butter in a pastry?
Certainly, immediately one would consider the plasticity of the fat to impact the pastry. If all these products are refrigerated, upon removal and at approximately 15C, one generally will observe the oil to be liquid, the shortening to be plastic like and the butter to be hard. The oil would coat the flour particles well and minimize the development of gluten from the reaction of gliadin, glutenin and water. The pastry would more likely be a meally, tender pastry if well cut into the flour. Cutting the shortening into the flour would depend upon the degree of cutting and the particle size. The affect of the shortening would depend upon the plasticity, or otherwise the relationship of the saturated versus unsaturated fatty acids on the triglyceride and, ultimately, the ease of crystallization. With butter, although you have a high amount of saturated fatty acids, these fatty acids are short-chained and, thus, more likely to be liquid like or less plastic at room temperature or slightly higher. The butter may quickly get very soft. Although hard at refrigerator temperature, because of its uniformity of triglycerides, it will have a fairly sharp melting point.
However, this is not the whole story. Assume we are discussing a standard measure of each of the types of fats. The oil and shortening would be 100% fatty acids and triglycerides. The butter contains approximately 15% water. The implications of this is that the additional water will facilitate the development of gluten. Thus, butter may be a tougher product.
All of these results are what might happen if one set up a carefully run experiment to compare the fats in the making of a classic pastry/pie shell. However, it should be kept in mind that one can make a high quality pastry out of either of these fats. They would just adjust their preparation techniques.
Compiled for Food Resource http://food.orst.edu