How to Make Biscuits Butter vs. Shortening. This post is sponsored by Clabber Girl. All opinions provided are my own. Butter or shortening Its a debate Ive heard among many bakers and even within the comments of my blog so I decided to tackle another round of baking experiments. Recently Clabber Girl challenged me to use their baking powder in a series of posts all about biscuits throughout the rest of the year. What better subject for baking experimentation Also, how cool is my job To kick off this months biscuit post Im experimenting with one of the most important ingredients of the biscuit and thats the fat. Images/2014/4/9/101146924.jpg.rendition.largest.jpg' alt='What To Use Instead Of Shortening' title='What To Use Instead Of Shortening' />Learn about the qualities of soapmaking oils so you can customize your soap and create new homemade soap recipes. Read. Before you write a sixword story, you should look at some examples. A great website you can use is sixwordstories. If you just want to look at a few. Award Winning Material. TECC materials have received the following awards London International Advertising Award, Cannes International Advertising Award, and. URL shortening services are experiencing a renaissance in the age of Twitter. When every character counts, these services reduce long URLs to tiny forms. But which is. Read Whole Livings Choosing Healthier Oils article. Also get diet weight loss advice, answers to medical questions, and learn about tips for better sleep at. TinyURL is a URL shortening web service, which provides short aliases for redirection of long URLs. Kevin Gilbertson, a web developer, launched the service in January. Skirt Steak Marinade Recipes there. We wanted to find out which fat is better for making the perfect biscuit butter or shortening I wanted to go beyond showing you how to make biscuits and help you understand how the ingredients impact your final product. It seems so simple to just substitute out one ingredient with another but baking is truly a science and every change you make can result in a totally different product Keep reading to find out how butter and shortening impact everything from the dough, appearance, taste, and texture of your typical buttermilk biscuits and to find out which was my favorite Be sure to follow Clabber Girl on Facebook for tons of baking recipes and tips and stay tuned for more posts all about biscuits Perhaps the best aspect of homemade biscuits is just how simple they are with just a handful of staple ingredients and a few steps. Ill never understand how those processed canned biscuits became so popular since biscuit dough takes just minutes to whip upSure, youll have a few more dishes to clean but theres nothing that compares to the unadulterated goodness of a homemade biscuit. To experiment with butter versus shortening, I used the following standard biscuit recipe, which is my go to. I used the same techniques, ingredients except the fat of course, baking times and temperatures to ensure consistency between the two batches. Biscuits Butter vs. Shortening. Prep Time. Cook Time. 30 minutes. Total Time 4. 0 mins. Which fat makes the best pie Know your ingredients butter vs. Gives synonyms, equivalents, and substitutions for fats used in cooking. Another difference between shortening and lard is that shortening is often used when baking glutenfree products which are consumed by men and women who are allergic. A kitchen experiment into how to make biscuits absolutely perfect by comparing an all butter biscuit versus an all shortening biscuit. Which is the best Ingredients 2 cups 9 ounces all purpose flour, plus more for dusting 2 teaspoons granulated sugar 1 tablespoon Clabber Girl baking powder 14 teaspoon baking soda 1 teaspoon fine salt 6 tablespoons unsalted butter OR vegetable shortening, very cold 1 cup buttermilk, chilledDirections. Preheat the oven to 4. F. Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper. In the bowl of a food processor, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt. If you like baking your own treats at home, you might have stumbled upon some recipes and asked yourself what is shortening The chemical process involved is a. Add the butter or the shortening and pulse the food processor several times to cut the fat into the flour until the mixture resembles coarse meal. You can also do this by hand with a pastry blender. The faster you do this the better, you want the fat to remain cold. Stir in the buttermilk until just combined. DO NOT overmix, the dough will be slightly sticky. Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and dust the dough with flour. Gently pat the dough out until its a 12 inch in thickness. Use a 2 inch round biscuit cutter to push straight down through the dough to cut out circles, try not to twist the cutter. Place the biscuits on the baking sheet, spacing 2 inches apart. Reform the scrap dough into 12 inch thickness, being sure to work with it as little as possible, before cutting out more circles. You should get 1. Bake the biscuits until golden brown, about 1. Tessa. All Butter Dough. The all butter dough was slightly less cohesive than the all shortening dough, and I attribute this to the fact that the butters texture is firmer than shortening. Even when both fats were chilled in the same freezer for the same length of time, the butter was significantly more solid which made it easier to retain chunks of butter while mixing the dough. The cold chunks of butter are important because as they melt into the biscuit while baking they create tiny pockets of steam that puffs and lifts the dough. These pockets turn into that beautiful light and flaky texture we crave with biscuits. The steam comes from butters water content, which is usually about 1. Those chunks of butter, while as glorious as they become while baking, do make the dough a little loose and slightly difficult to work with. Not to mention butters low melting point makes it more difficult to work with as it needs to be cautiously kept cold. Shortening Dough. The shortening dough, on the other hand, came together much more easily. In fact, it came together almost too much. If you overwork biscuit dough you run the risk of getting tough and dense biscuits. With the shortening being so sticky itself, even when chilled, it made it hard to retain any sort of looseness in the dough. Instead, it all came together in a slightly sticky, shaggy mass. This doesnt matter as much as it does with the all butter dough, however. Where butter is only about 8. There is no steam created in shortening dough that lends the same light, airy flakiness as with butter dough. While the shortening dough was nicely cohesive, the stickiness made it difficult to roll out and shape. Any type of biscuit dough, or even pie dough which is very similar, is going to be more difficult to work with than a soft, smooth, and supple yeast dough. The pay off, however, is that it only takes about a half hour to make biscuits from start to finish Baking the Biscuits. So, what happened when the biscuits came out of the oven Well, upon first glance the butter biscuits were significantly more browned with flatter tops. When bitten into, the butter biscuits were moist and slightly spongier than the shortening biscuits. The best part was the flavor and slightly more crunchy exterior texture contrasted by that ultra tender interior. The shortening biscuits were much more pale, with slightly domed craggy tops. They also seemed a bit more irregular in height. The biscuits themselves were more crumbly when bitten into and lacked that characteristic butter flavor that simply cannot be replicated by anything artificial. I offered two biscuits to Jared and made him guess which was butter and which was shortening and he got it right. You can definitely taste the difference and as a butter lover, I definitely preferred the butter biscuits. However, the shortening biscuits did remind me of biscuits Ive had at Southern eateries in the past with their slightly drier, crumblier texture. Since shortening has a higher melting point than butter, meaning it requires more heat to melt shortening than it does to melt butter, it makes shortening less challenging to work with. You dont have to worry as much about it getting too warm in the dough and it brings together the dough more easily. However, that higher melting point can also be a very bad thing because it means that it doesnt fully melt in the mouth like butter does, leaving behind an unpleasant waxy coating on the palate. So whats the final verdict Butter is the winner here. The butter biscuits were moister with that wonderful butter taste and melt in your mouth texture. Id be curious to test out substituting half or just two tablespoons of the butter with shortening to see if you get the best of both. Have you experimented with thatWhat do you prefer to use in your biscuits Like this post Share it on Pinterest This post is sponsored by Clabber Girl. All opinions provided are my own. How to make Biscuits Butter vs. Shortening. Recipe By Tessa Arias, Handle the Heat. Yield 1. 0 to 1. Prep Time 1. Cook 3. 0 minutes. Ingredients. 2 cups 9 ounces all purpose flour, plus more for dusting. Clabber Girl baking powder. OR vegetable shortening, very cold. Directions. Preheat the oven to 4. F. Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper.