Homemade Honey Butter Cheddar Biscuits. (2024)

FAQs

Is buttermilk or milk better for biscuits? ›

Buttermilk adds a nice tang to the biscuit flavor and helps them rise better.

Ingredients: Enriched Flour Bleached (wheat flour, niacin, ferrous sulfate, thiamin mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), Water, Soybean and Palm Oil, Sugar, Hydrogenated Palm Oil, Baking Powder (sodium acid pyrophosphate, baking soda, sodium aluminum phosphate).

Make sure your butter is at the correct temperature – use unsalted butter softened to room temperature for creaming and cold, unsalted butter for biscuits and pastries that require butter to be rubbed into the flour.

Increasing the amount of butter definitely makes the biscuit "taste" softer, more crumbly, and more flaky.

This quick and easy buttermilk substitute is incredibly simple, and my hope is that you have what you need at home already. Here's what you need: Lemon juice OR vinegar. Fresh or bottled lemon juice OR distilled white vinegar will work equally well.

There are many theories about why Southern biscuits are different (ahem, better) than other biscuits—richer buttermilk, more butter, better grandmothers—but the real difference is more fundamental. Southern biscuits are different because of the flour most Southerners use. My grandmother swore by White Lily flour.

Cream of Tartar is undoubtedly a key ingredient in biscuits, providing essential leavening action, texture enhancement, and stability. Its ability to balance acidity, preserve freshness, and adapt to various biscuit variations makes it a staple in the baker's pantry.

The obvious difference between the two is that one is made with buttermilk and the other with regular milk. Buttermilk biscuits have a tangy flavor, tender texture, and delicate layers. Regular biscuits have a milder flavor and may not rise as much.

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.

Use Cold Butter for Biscuits

For flaky layers, use cold butter. When you cut in the butter, you have coarse crumbs of butter coated with flour. When the biscuit bakes, the butter will melt, releasing steam and creating pockets of air. This makes the biscuits airy and flaky on the inside.

Are homemade biscuits better with butter or shortening? ›

The butter version rises the highest — look at those flaky layers! The shortening biscuit is slightly shorter and a bit drier, too. Butter contains a bit of water, which helps create steam and gives baked goods a boost.

In general, with baking you want to use unsalted butter so that you can control the amount of salt in your final product.

Buttermilk adds a tangy flavor to the biscuits and makes them slightly more tender.

Taste-Test Results:

Four of eight people could tell no difference in taste between the shortening and butter biscuits. Two of eight people thought the shortening biscuits tasted better than the butter biscuits. One of eight people thought the butter biscuits tasted slightly saltier, but not necessarily better.

In recipes that call for buttermilk, it is not recommended to replace buttermilk with plain milk, because the absence of acid will not produce the same end result.

Milk or Buttermilk: I love how this recipe works with milk or buttermilk. If you love the tangy flavor of buttermilk, use it.

Buttermilk is used primarily for its pleasant tangy flavor, but it can also help tenderize and leaven certain baked goods.

Buttermilk is used in biscuit-making for its acid and fat content. Its acidity works with the leaveners to help the dough rise, producing a taller and fluffier biscuit. Buttermilk also adds a subtle tang. Cream biscuits are made with heavy cream.