Reply to Would a cheap person ever use shortening in place of butter for chocolate chip cookies?

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Reply to "Would a cheap person ever use shortening in place of butter for chocolate chip cookies?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]LOL, you guys are so precious about your butter. Excellent bakers know when butter is the ingredient and when shortening is better, due to water and solids content, not to mention how it act with the other ingredients[/quote]

This, which is why it's ridiculous to see all these people who don't bake acting like butter is the expensive, high end ingredient. It's comical. I have shortbread cookies I make with olive oil (and rosemary and chocolate), and since you can really taste the olive oil, I use the expensive stuff I buy from the specialty Italian store instead of the giant bottle of California olive oil I buy at the grocery store. But there are lots of other recipes I make using vegetable oil or shortening because they give a better texture. Many recipes work better with shortening because it is more stable during cooking. Still other recipes, I will melt the butter before incorporating into the batter, rather than creaming with the sugar. For pastry, I sometimes use shortening because of the challenges of working butter into a dough when my kitchen is hot. Shortening doesn't get hard like butter when it's cold, but it also doesn't melt when it's warm, making it an easier option if I'm making pie crusts in July or at the same time as I'm baking something in the oven at 500 degrees making my kitchen run hot. I like having options.

It's such a DCUM thing to be like "ew Crisco, don't poor people use that? it must be bad." It's ignorant and elitist, and therefore perfectly on brand.[/quote]

1. Sometimes shortening is the correct ingredient for a recipe/ climate / technique - but 99/100 that is not true for chocolate chip cookies
2. Some of us who grew up in working class or poor households saw our moms and grandmothers bake almost exclusively with shortening or margarine - and it was purely about cost and shelf stability - not some superior knowledge of pastry technique. 
3. If you really bake a lot, you would know how butter has more than doubled in price over the last 6-8 months. So currently it is a “high end” ingredient. High enough that a less experienced baker may swap butter Crisco or margarine for a recipe developed for butter.

Your superior baking snobbery is also very on brand DCUM ridiculousness. [/quote]

1. The point is not that shortening is the "right" ingredient for cookies, it's that it's common for bakers to use shortening (and not consider some kind of disgusting low class option), which means that someone might sub it in if they were low on butter without being cheap. It might simply be what she had on hand. No one is saying that good bakers ONLY use shortening, only that people who bake a lot wouldn't turn their noses up at it, and might be willing to use it in a pinch. It's insane for OP to call someone (who baked them a free cookie!) cheap because she might have used shortening in a recipe.

2. I grew up in a working class household that used shortening and margarine. And then when I was in high school, my dad started a business that took off and my parents are now very well off. My mom, who bakes a ton and is excellent at it, doesn't buy margarine anymore and is picky about the butter she buys. But she still always has a big thing of Crisco in the cabinet because it's a useful baking ingredient. It's also not actually that cheap! She would not normally use it in chocolate chip cookies, but I could see her supplementing with it if she was baking a big batch for my dad's work and ran low on butter. It might change the flavor of the cookies but she's not cheap, she's practical and knows how to bake.

3. I do in fact bake a lot and butter has increased in price but if you know where to shop, it's not necessarily twice the price. Also, since I bake a lot, I buy butter in bulk and will watch Harris Teeter for BOGO 1/2 off on butter and buy several pounds at once. I also know for certain that the very high end butters like Kerry Gold do not improve the flavor of baked goods and in some ways can interfere with a well-balanced recipe. I prefer using Land'o'lakes unsalted which I think has the best texture and flavor for baking. I am frugal but not cheap.

The difference between my baking snobbery and yours is that mine is based on real knowledge and yours is based on classist assumptions.[/quote]

I mostly agree- but shortening is low class baking.  It just is.  You can get perfectly flakey pie crust crust, biscuits, and anything else you need with butter.  So why would you put some cheap fake hydrogenated oil in stuff you are making for your family/friends?[/quote]

Np. You are full of it. [/quote]

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