Palm Oil in Baking: Why We Skip It (and What We Use Instead)
Walk down any packaged snack aisle and you’ll find palm oil hiding in almost everything — biscuits, cakes, croissants, even “healthy” granola bars. It’s the most widely used vegetable oil in the world, and for good reason: it’s cheap, shelf-stable, and gives baked goods that soft, melt-in-the-mouth texture people love. At Royal Crumb, we’ve made a deliberate choice to skip it entirely — it’s one of the clean-label promises woven right into our full menu. This post breaks down what it actually is, why so many bakeries lean on it, why we don’t, and what we use instead to get better flavor without the trade-offs.
What Is Palm Oil, and Why Is It Everywhere in Baking?
Palm oil comes from the fruit of the oil palm tree, primarily grown in Indonesia and Malaysia. There are two main forms used in food production: crude palm oil, pressed from the fruit’s pulp, and palm kernel oil, extracted from the seed. Both are prized in commercial baking because they’re semi-solid at room temperature, which mimics the structure butter or shortening would normally provide — but at a fraction of the cost.
That’s the real reason it dominates industrial baking. It’s not about taste or nutrition; it’s about margins. A bakery producing thousands of units a day needs an oil that’s cheap, has a long shelf life, resists rancidity, and behaves consistently in high-volume production. Palm oil checks every box on that list, which is exactly why it shows up in nearly 50% of packaged supermarket goods.
The Problem With Palm Oil
The issues here fall into two buckets: environmental and nutritional.
Environmental impact. Palm oil cultivation is one of the leading drivers of deforestation in Southeast Asia. Vast rainforest tracts — many of them orangutan and tiger habitats — are cleared to make way for plantations, a pattern WWF has documented in detail among endangered species across the region. Even when a brand sources “sustainable palm oil” or certifies through the RSPO (Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil), supply chains are notoriously difficult to trace, and greenwashing is common. For a bakery that wants to stand behind every ingredient it uses, unverifiable sustainability claims aren’t good enough.
Nutritional profile. This oil is roughly 50% saturated fat, comparable to butter, but without butter’s flavor or nutrient density — a point Harvard’s Nutrition Source has flagged when comparing tropical oils to other fat sources. It’s often used specifically because it’s cheaper than butter while still delivering that same rich mouthfeel — but nutritionally, you’re getting saturated fat with none of the trade-off in taste that would make it worth it. Some processed forms also carry trace amounts of contaminants formed during high-heat refining, which is a separate ongoing concern in food safety research.
Why We Skip Palm Oil at Royal Crumb
We’re a pre-order bakery, which changes our incentives completely. We’re not trying to stretch shelf life for a warehouse or a supermarket shelf — every cake, cookie, and loaf is made fresh, for someone who’s already placed an order. That means we never needed the shelf-stability this ingredient offers in the first place. Once you remove that constraint, there’s no real reason to reach for it.
Going without it is one of our non-negotiables at Royal Crumb, alongside no refined sugar, no preservatives, and no artificial colors — you can read more about what drives that on our About page. It’s not a marketing checkbox — it’s a direct result of how we bake: in small batches, close to the order date, with ingredients we can actually explain to a customer if they ask.
What We Use Instead
Going palm oil-free doesn’t mean compromising on texture. It means choosing fats with a purpose.
Cultured butter. For cakes, cookies, and laminated pastries, real butter gives structure, flavor, and that unmistakable richness a mass-market fat can only imitate. Yes, it costs more and has a shorter shelf life — but since everything is made to order, that’s a non-issue for us.
Cold-pressed oils. For batters that need a neutral, moist crumb — think chocolate cakes or muffins — we use cold-pressed sunflower or safflower oil instead. Cold-pressing retains more of the oil’s natural nutrients and avoids the heavy chemical refining industrial versions typically undergo.
Ghee. In a few traditional bakes, clarified butter (ghee) adds a distinct nutty depth that no vegetable oil, palm-based or otherwise, can replicate. It’s a nod to Delhi’s baking heritage as much as it is a functional fat choice.
Extra virgin olive oil. For specific recipes where a lighter, dairy-free fat is needed, extra virgin olive oil is our go-to. Unlike palm oil, it’s minimally processed and cold-extracted, and it comes from a crop with a dramatically smaller deforestation footprint and a cleaner, more traceable supply chain.
Each of these swaps costs more than the industrial standard. Each one also shortens shelf life compared to products made with it. We think that’s the right trade — because “shelf life” was never the goal. Flavor, freshness, and a clean ingredient list were.
Final Thoughts
Palm oil isn’t evil, and plenty of bakeries have good reasons for using it, especially at scale. But at Royal Crumb, being a small, pre-order bakery gives us the freedom to skip it — and to bake with butter, ghee, and cold-pressed oils instead, the way we’d want to eat ourselves. If you’ve been curious what “no palm oil” actually means beyond a label, hopefully this gives you the full picture: less about a single ingredient, and more about what kind of bakery you’re choosing to support.
Curious to taste the difference? Browse our full menu or reach out to place your order today.