Shortening, Butter, and Fat: How to Substitute for Baking

What is shortening?

The official definition of shortening is a butter, lard, or other fat, used to make pastry, bread, etc., short. It stays solid at room temperature. It can make pastry soft and crumbly.

What does it mean to make the dough short?

Dough can form long strands of gluten. This creates a chewy texture, like bread. When shortening is worked into the flour, it prevents long strands of dough from forming. The dough then becomes short! Short dough bakes into something that is flaky like a pie crust or crumbly like a cookie.

Shortening vs Butter

Many people associate shortening with the solid white stuff, Crisco. While many people still use Crisco, it does not offer the same flavor and nutritional value that butter has. It will give you the flaky texture without the buttery taste.

Another shortening option is coconut oil. I love, love, love to use coconut oil when I need something sweet.

Bonus tips for coconut oil:

1. Use it as a skin moisturizer. If you are using it to grease your pans, you can take the paper towels covered in the coconut oil and rub them on your hands. Super easy and your skin will love it.
2. Try melted coconut oil as substitute for vegetable, olive, or canola oil. Coconut oil tends to be more nutritious than most of the other liquid oils. High quality olive oil can be very expensive and may not be the best flavor for sweet treats.
3. When using melted coconut oil, try to warm your other liquid ingredients to room temperature before combining them. If you add cold eggs to warm melted coconut oil, the oil will start to solidify and you may find oil “chunks” in your baked goods.

The next type of shortening is lard. This is animal fat from a pig. Some lard comes from the back fat of a pig. Some lard is combined from all different areas of the pig. There is another, fancier lard called leaf lard that comes from around the kidneys and loin of the pig. This fat does not have any particular taste or smell and has a white color. Because of the “purity” of this lard, it can be more expensive.

What about butter? Actually, butter is a form of shortening! It is an animal by-product made from the fat of milk.

Butter has a higher water content than other shortening. In fact, about 80% of butter is fat while the other 20% is water and milk solids. Because of that, it may not hold crusts and cut-outs together well.

Depending on the product you are making, you may need firm or soft shortening. If the recipe calls for firm shortening, keep it chilled.

Other recipes, such as cookie recipes will call for softened butter. The best way to soften butter, in my opinion, is to leave it on the counter the night before.

Words of Warning:

Do NOT leave your butter in a hot place, such as near a stove or other source of heat. Too much heat will melt your butter. Melted butter can leave you with flat cookies. Bummer.

Shortening to Butter Conversion

Because butter is only about 80% fat, there is some math that must be done to have a perfect conversion of shortening to butter. Because there is less fat in butter, you will be using more butter for your recipe. You will also be subtracting from the liquid in the recipe.

The most accurate conversions are done by weight so you will need a small kitchen scale to do this.

For shortening to butter you will need to do some multiplication and subtraction. The first multiplication answer will give you the amount of butter you need as a substitute. The second multiplication answer will give you the amount of liquid you need to subtract from the recipe. The final step is to review the liquids in your recipe and subtract from whatever makes sense (based on taste and texture preferences):

1. Weight of shortening x 1.25 = Weight of butter
2. Weight of butter x 0.15 = Weight of liquid to subtract from the recipe

Butter to Shortening Conversion

For butter to shortening you will need to do some multiplication and addition. The multiplication will give you the amount of shortening you need as a substitute. The second multiplication answer will give you the amount of liquid (water or milk) you need to add to the recipe.

1. Weight of butter x 0.8 = Weight of shortening
2. Weight of butter x 0.15 = Weight of liquid to add to the recipe

But what about the lard?

For leaf lard, the experts at Tasting Table recommend a 1:1 conversion. That’s simple enough!