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Shortcut Pastry Mix
From Grandma's Wartime Baking Book: World War II and the Way We Baked by Joanne Lamb Hayes (St. Martin's Press, 2003)
Busy wartime homemakers were still expected to bake several pies a week for their families. This make-ahead pastry mix from a vegetable shortening advertisement was very popular because it gave a head start for preparing the pastry. The advertisement featured a kindly aunt advising, "Now it's so easy to give your men folks all the pies they want."
Ingredients
7 cups unsifted all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon salt
1 tablespoon sugar
1 can (1 pound) vegetable shortening
Directions
Combine flour, salt and sugar in a large bowl. Add half of the shortening. Cut shortening into dry ingredients with pastry blender or two knives used scissors fashion until mixture is the consistency of cornmeal. Add remaining half of shortening and cut into dry ingredients until the size of green peas. Store in a tightly-closed container in a cool part of the kitchen.
To make the pastry for a double-crust pie or eight tart shells, measure 3 cups of mix into a medium bowl and stir in 5 tablespoons ice water using a fork. Press mixture together to make two flattened balls of pastry. Roll out and fill as directed in pie recipe. Use half recipe for a single-crust pie.
Suggestions
Makes seven (10- to 11-inch) pastry rounds. Use to make Apricot-Peach Pie.