Homemade Vegan Pie Crust

I haven't had a lot of luck finding a vegan pie crust in my local grocery stores, so I decided to move beyond my comfort zone and make my own. I have very little pastry experience, so keep that in mind as you witness my very poor technique. Since I started looking, I did hear that Marie Callender has a vegan pie crust. So if you can find that in your store, use that one. I'm using Crisco Butter Flavored Shortening Sticks as well as their recipe off their website. You need half of a stick. And you'll want to cut it into smaller pieces. Put it in the freezer for about 10 to 15 minutes so it can chill. I also have a glass of water in the freezer so it can get really cold as well. According to the website Cookstr, "Cold temperatures help a piecrust maintain its flakiness and shape. The fats should be chilled and the water ice-cold. And the idea is to just work the fat into the flour to create small, flour-coated pellets. The dough is held together with ice water, which helps keep the fat distinct and when the dough is rolled out, the fat is flattened into flakes. When it's baked, the fat creates steam, which lifts the dough into flaky layers." So that's the science behind why everything should be cold. I'm making this pie crust in a food processor, which makes it very very quick and easy. So you need 1 ½ cups of all purpose flour, ¾ teaspoon of salt and 1 teaspoon of sugar. Mix it up for a few seconds. Then you're gonna add your shortening. Pulse the food processor until you get pea size pieces of flour coated shortening. It should look something like this. Add 5 tablespoons of the ice cold water. And then pulse it again just until it forms a ball of dough. And it's pretty cool how that happens. And it's gonna come together like this. Remove it, shape it into a circle, place it on a piece of saran wrap, flatten it into a disk and wrap it up. Place it in the refrigerator for 30 minutes or overnight so the gluten can relax, and this will make sure that your crust won't shrink when you bake it. When you take it out, you can do 1 of 2 things. What I did was - I put it between 2 pieces of wax paper and rolled it out from the center. And turned it about 45 degrees each time so that it will be round. You could also just flour your surface, flour the rolling pin and roll it out. I made this way too hard. Wax paper is sliding around. It's a mess! So, then you wanna get it onto your pie plate. The wax paper - I think - makes it easier to do this, but there are other ways to do it. If you wanna Google better technique, it's out there on YouTube. Tuck in the edges and crimp them. This is a rustic look! Poke holes in the bottom so steam will escape and you won't have air bubbles. Now, it's ready for your filling! Thanks for watching Vegan Cooking with Love! If you liked this video, please give it a thumbs up and share it with a friend. And don't forget to subscribe so you get my new videos and check out some of my ones while you're here. See you next time!