Using Lard in Pastry

[sheetz]

Pontormo, from what I understand, leaf lard is used because it is less "porky" than the fat from other parts of the animal. What type of fat did you use?

[Pontormo]

Pontormo, from what I understand, leaf lard is used because it is less "porky" than the fat from other parts of the animal. What type of fat did you use?

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Fat from around the kidneys of pasture-fed pigs which produces leaf lard. Most very white. Smells porky...but obviously I did not use optimal methods in rendering the fat. I haven't tried baking w it yet. I'll find out then whether or not I'm the princess w a pea.

[Pontormo]

Wow, this forum is awesome.  It would never have occured to me that one could make one's own lard.  Please let us know how it goes.

And it's possible the OP just doesn't have any lard around...I know I don't bake nearly enough pies (read: almost never) to justify stocking it.

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While I posted after rendering the lard and have been using it for savory Mexican dishes, I made a pastry for the first time this week. Half butter, half lard (total 114 g) and 1 t cider vinegar replacing a little of the ice water.

Yes, indeed, the results were wonderfully flaky. Really one of the best textures I can ever recall short of following the long fold & rest techniques of puff pastry. Also responds very well to re-heating (quiche in this case). The edges browned perfectly, caramelizing less than an all-butter crust, so I didn't have to cover them with foil to prevent burning.

One draw-back: I missed the flavor of an all-butter crust. I could not detect anything porky, though, so I am sure it would be fine w any kind of sweet pie.

[helenjp]

I've rendered lard using fifi's method, and also simply cooking it stovetop in quite a large amount of water. It's cold enough in my kitchen this time of year that I can simply lift the solid lard layer off the top of the water, dry it on paper towels, and pack it away.

Doing it this way seems to minimize the porky flavor - I'm mostly using pork belly, and the "defatted" pork is then fried and cooked with beans in the defatted liquor used to render the lard.

I'm with Lindacakes on this - it appears that lard has lower levels of saturated fat than butter, not to mention suet or mutton tallow. Duck or goose-fat, schmaltz even lower. For whatever reason, these fats seem better in pie pastry than suet, anyway.

I've been experimenting with an Okinawan cookie known as Chinsuko - basically one part each by weight of sugar and flour, with 2 parts of lard. Baked at a cookie-ish temperature until lightly browned all through, and crunchy.

A cookie as simple as this naturally tastes of lard. This is not a bad thing , especially if you rendered your own lard.