Yes, of course you can make pastry without butter!

Shortcrust pastry is normally made with butter which can take a lot of time and effort as you need to slowly rub the butter into the flour. As well as time consuming, this can also get quite messy. As Mellow Yellow Rapeseed Oil has much less saturated fat than butter, we often encourage people to swap butter in cooking for Mellow Yellow, but pastry has always proved tricky. However, we decided to do a bit of recipe testing in the Mellow Yellow kitchen and see if we could create the perfect shortcrust pastry recipe using Mellow Yellow.

Eli got to work, changing quantities of oil, flour and water to achieve the perfect melt-in-the-mouth texture, not too crumbly and not too hard. After a few attempts, she had finally cracked it! We have created two pastry recipes; one is sweet for creating delicious fruit pies and galettes and a savoury recipe that is ideal for quiches and tarts. Eli’s method simply involves mixing Mellow Yellow Rapeseed Oil with flour until it comes together to form a breadcrumb-like texture. Next you pour in water and mix, the pastry will then come together into a ball. After resting in the fridge, your pastry is ready to be rolled out and used in your recipe!

As well as being super simple, by making pastry without butter, the pastry is now suitable for vegans or anyone that is dairy-free.

So if you would like to have a go at making pastry without butter, try our simple recipes below.

Savoury Pastry

This is our basic savoury pastry recipe. Using a mixture of wholemeal and white flour, we have created a fantastically versatile recipe that is perfect for quiches, tarts, pies and pasties. By adding wholemeal flour, this pastry isn’t too crumbly and has a delicious nutty flavour. Find the recipe here.

Use this pastry in:

Asparagus, Cheese and Egg Tartlets

Sweet Pastry

Our vegan sweet shortcrust pastry recipe uses plain flour to give a delicious crumbly texture with a touch of sweetness. Perfect for making simple fruit galettes, pies or tarts, this recipe is so easy that you’ll be able to make a batch of pastry in no time at all. You can find our recipe here.

Use this pastry in:

Blackberry & Apple Galette

Mini Strawberry Galettes

Mince Pies

For more recipes using Mellow Yellow Rapeseed Oil, visit our Recipes page.