Oil Based Pie Crust

After a lot of testing  I finally came up with  an oil based crust  recipe that is flaky, my neighbor Jim who grew up on a traditional lard pie, after testing one of my fruit tarts, he commented that it was as good as the lard one and hadn't I told him I've made  it with oil he wouldn't have known the difference. My heart was singing when I heard that, finally a good crust!

I decided to share the recipe with you today, and hopefully you'll like it too.

Oil Based Pie Crust Recipe



2/3 cup oil, use vegetable, extra light olive oil or sunflower oil
1tsp  vanilla bean paste or vanilla extract
1/3 cup milk
1/2tsp salt
1tsp sugar
2 cups flour
2tsp white vinegar

• Put oil into the freezer until it solidifies and turns into to consistency of very thick syrup, this may take 30 minutes or longer.
• Chill the milk and vinegar
• Chill 2 forks 
• Into the bowl add flour, salt and sugar, stir with the forks
• Add chilled oil, vanilla, milk and vinegar and stir with forks until the dough comes together and forms a ball, you should see flour streaks in the dough
• This whole process can be done in the food processor, since I don't own one I make it by hand
• Wrap the dough into the plastic wrap to chill for 15 minutes
• Use as a regular pie crust

I've never chilled oil so this was a fun experience