What It Means To 'Cut In Butter' When Baking

There are a lot of recipe instructions that will make you say "Huh?" — as shown in the "folding in the cheese" scene in "Schitt's Creek." Another recipe instruction that may cause a similar degree of confusion is "cutting in the butter." While you might think it just means to slice the butter, rather than just adding the whole stick in at once, before you add it to the rest of the ingredients, this explanation is only a small piece of a much larger puzzle. 

Essentially, cutting in butter just refers to the process of breaking down the butter into small pieces so that it can be evenly distributed into a dough or dry ingredient (like flour). There are several different tools and techniques that you can use to cut butter into your recipe. For one, you can opt for a pastry cutter, which will easily break up the larger pieces of butter. All you need to do is break the butter down with the tool until there are no large pieces remaining and the butter and flour mixture appears coarse. 

However, you don't need to go out and buy a whole new tool just for this one purpose; you can also smash up the butter with a fork or even use a knife to break it up. A food processor can also expedite this process, as the blade easily cuts through the fat and the flour. If you opt for the latter, just make sure that you don't overwork the dough.

One recipe where you will see this step pop up is for a pie crust. The butter (though, the same technique can also be used for other types of fat, like shortening or even lard) needs to be broken into smaller pieces and spread throughout the dough so that when it goes in the oven and the water inside of it melts, it releases a puff of steam. The resulting steam pocket is what gives your pie dough its signature flaky layers. If you leave large, poorly distributed chunks of butter throughout your recipe, you'll be left with uneven pockets. 

Since you want the steam to be released from the butter, it's important to never cut in the butter with your hands. One of the biggest mistakes people make with pies (and by proxy, pie dough) is working the dough so much with their hands that the butter melts. Not only does the liquid interact with the gluten and cause the crust to turn bread-like and elasticky, but it also reduces the amount of puff you get when you hit the oven.