Post Punk Kitchen Forum

Since my husband developed a soy intolerance I've been using Earth Balance soy-free for everything. The Earth Balance site says you can sub it one-for-one in baking; a bunch of cooking sites I read say you can't because of the different water/salt content.

I've been getting fairly good results measuring by weight in various cookie recipes, but I'm about to make my first from-scratch pie crusts in, um - 20 years? No good reason for that - and I'm worried it'll be less satisfactory at the structural function it plays there. Wondering if anyone has experience with this - I could just go with a coconut-oil or shortening recipe but I'm really fond of the half-butter/half shortening recipe I used to use.

Thanks!

i use that stuff 1:1 as a butter replacement and things work out just fine for me! My brother's girlfriend's daughter (phew!) is soy free, so I always have a tub of that on hand when I'm baking for her.

It's usually cautioned against substituting 1:1 butter to margarine because margarine is usually meant to be lower fat/calorie option which makes it poor for baking. Earth Balance is just vegan butter so it works the same as butter would in my experience. I've used the soy free 1:1 in lots of things and it turns out great. The only hint I would add would be that in your pie crust you might not need as much water. I was just making vegan pie crust at work and didn't pay attention and added all the water the recipe called for and by then it was too wet and I was back to slowly adding flour until it was the texture I wanted.

Excellent - thanks!