Or other baked goodness… what’s going on behind the scenes? I know when to cut in and when to add melted butter (or shortening), but I don’t know in a food-science sort of way why.
Thanks~
Rhythm
You cut in shortening and butter, so the mix is not homogeneous. This is why you can make a flaky pie crust. You also don’t activate the gluten as much by cutting in ingredients.
Yeah, you want little lumps of fat, so it will melt in the oven and form layers.
First, picture the dough with the lumps of butter or shortening “cut in”. You have many small lumps of easily melted substance between layers of dough, forming pockets full of solid fat throughout the dough. When this is baked, the fat melts and coats the dough in its pocket, preventing the layers it previously separated from sticking together. It bakes up as flaky layers of dough, like a good pastry, because all of those layers were separated by butter or shortening.
I use a chilled food processor, and chilled flour and butter. If I don’t have a processor, I use a pastry blender. The more chilled your tools and ingredients are, the better results you’ll get; soft butter is messy.
I’ve lately learned that grating frozen butter makes for excellent biscuits or any other thing that calls for cold butter or shortening to be cut in.