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Here’s how to make vegan pie crust! This flaky pastry can be made using coconut oil or vegan butter, and no one would guess it’s plant-based.

Vegan pie crust
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Want to make your favorite pie…but plant based? Here’s the baking trick you need: this Flaky Vegan Pie Crust! This pastry crust is flaky, tender and perfectly seasoned: no one would guess there’s no butter. You can make it with coconut oil or vegan butter, and we’ve tested it on friends and family: no one will know the difference! We love using this crust for our apple pie or pumpkin pie: but you can use it as a plant-based stand-in for any of your favorite pie recipes. Let’s get baking!

Ingredients for vegan pie crust

This vegan pie crust is essentially like a standard crust, but it replaces the butter or lard! We’ve tested this recipe with coconut oil and vegan butter, and either one works. This makes it a super versatile recipe for whatever plant-based butter substitute you have on hand. Here’s the short list of ingredients you need for this recipe:

  • All purpose flour
  • Kosher salt
  • Baking powder
  • Coconut oil (refined) or vegan butter
Vegan pumpkin pie

Notes on vegan butter

With the interest in plant based coking these days, it’s becoming easier to find a vegan butter that’s minimally processed to use in recipes like vegan pie crust and vegan biscuits. When you’re shopping for vegan butter, check the ingredient lists and find one that is minimally processed with real food ingredients. Another plus is using organic! We used Miyoko’s Vegan Butter, which is made with mostly cashews and coconut (and happens to be organic).

Whatever the case, do not buy anything marked margarine! Margarine is much too soft to make a pie crust.

Coconut oil vs vegan butter in vegan pie crust

You can go either the coconut oil or the vegan butter route for this vegan pie crust, and they both result in perfectly tasty crust! Here’s what we learned while testing these plant based butter substitutes:

  • Coconut oil vegan pie crust: The pastry comes out beautifully crisp and crunchy! We recommend using refined coconut oil, as you can’t detect much of a coconut flavor.
  • Vegan butter pie crust: The pastry comes out flaky with a little more of a savory, buttery flavor than coconut oil. The exact texture and flavor depends on the brand of vegan butter and what it’s made of.
Vegan pie crust recipe

Helpful tools for vegan pie crust!

It’s helpful to have a few things on hand to make vegan pie crust: though of these items, only the pie plate is required!

What’s a pastry cloth? Why use it? A pastry cloth is a piece of canvas used for rolling out dough, cookies, biscuits and other baked goods. It helps to keep the dough from sticking, and provides helpful lines for cutting out the circle of dough. A rolling pin cover also helps to keep the dough from sticking to the rolling pin. These tools are fairly inexpensive and are very helpful to make the most perfect vegan pie crust. But they’re not required if you don’t have them on hand!

Make ahead and storage instructions: refrigerate or freeze

Once nice thing about a vegan pie crust is that you can make it in advance! You can refrigerate it until baking, or freeze it for later. Here are the storage instructions:

  • Refrigerate for 1 day: You can make this vegan pie crust in advance: wrap it in plastic wrap or foil and refrigerate until baking. Do this if you are planning to bake within 1 day.
  • Freeze for 1 month: Want to make it further in advance? Wrap it in plastic wrap and pop it in the freezer. It stays good for at least 1 month, and likely longer.
Vegan Pie Crust

Pie recipes for vegan pie crust!

There are lots of ways to use this vegan pie crust recipe! There are pie fillings that are naturally vegan (like apple pie!), or we have a few recipes for vegan pies below.

  • Best Apple Pie Recipe This apple pie is naturally vegan on the inside! It’s easy to convert it to a plant-based apple pie.
  • Mini Apple Pies Substitute coconut oil for the butter in the filling to make these tasty mini apple pies flavored with bourbon!
  • Chocolate Cherry Galette This tasty cherry rustic pie is full of flavor and drizzled with chocolate.
  • Rustic Apple Galette Substitute coconut oil for the butter in the filling to make this rustic apple pie.

This vegan pie crust recipe is…

Vegetarian, vegan, and plant-based.

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Perfect Vegan Pie Crust

Vegan pie crust
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Here’s how to make vegan pie crust! This flaky pastry can be made using coconut oil or vegan butter, and no one would guess it’s plant-based. 

  • Author: Sonja Overhiser
  • Prep Time: 20 minutes
  • Cook Time: N/A
  • Total Time: 0 hours
  • Yield: 1 pie crust 1x
  • Category: Baking
  • Method: Baked
  • Cuisine: American
  • Diet: Vegan

Ingredients

Scale
  • 1 ⅓ cups all purpose flour
  • ½ teaspoon kosher salt
  • ¼ teaspoon baking powder
  • 8 tablespoons refined coconut oil or vegan butter (not margarine!)
  • 6 to 7 tablespoons ice water

Instructions

  1. In a medium bowl, mix the all purpose flour, kosher salt, and baking powder. Use a grater or microplane to large grate the vegan butter into the bowl with the dry ingredients (it will look like shredded cheese!), or drop small blobs of the coconut oil into the flour mixture. Then stir it gently with a spatula to coat the butter or coconut oil with the flour.
  2. Sprinkle 6 tablespoons ice water over the flour, mixing gradually with a fork until the dough sticks together. Add additional water by the tablespoon until the dough comes together with your hands, but is not sticky (add a bit more water or flour if necessary). Form the dough into a ball and refrigerate in a covered container until the filling is ready, or at least 30 minutes.
  3. If you have a pastry cloth, set it up and dust it with flour; otherwise, flour a clean work surface. Put on a rolling pin cover (optional), and coat the pin in extra flour. Place one ball of dough on the cloth and roll it evenly from the center to the edge, until the dough is about ⅛-inch thick. Trim the dough to an even 12-inch circle with a pizza cutter (which corresponds to the 9-inch circle on the pastry cloth).
  4. Using a rolling pin, transfer the dough to 9-inch pie pan (standard sized, not deep dish). Gently center and push the pastry towards the bottom of the pan. Fold the 1-inch of overhanging dough backwards and seal it to form a rim. Using your index finger and thumb from one hand and a knuckle from your other hand, crimp the edges of the crust. 
  5. Storage instructions: To store, cover the shell in plastic wrap or foil and refrigerate it until ready to fill, or freeze for up to 1 month.

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About the authors

Alex & Sonja

Hi! We’re Alex & Sonja Overhiser, authors of the acclaimed cookbooks A Couple Cooks and Pretty Simple Cooking—and a real life couple who cooks together. We founded the A Couple Cooks website in 2010 to share seasonal recipes and the joy of home cooking. Now, we’ve got over 3,000 well-tested recipes, including Mediterranean diet, vegan, vegetarian, pescatarian, smoothies, cocktails, and more!

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3 Comments

  1. Rita says:

    Do you have a recipe for gluten free pie crust?

  2. Amanda Moulton says:

    Is this just enough for the bottom crust or can it do the top and bottom of a pie?