Parmesan Drop Biscuits Recipe - w/ Mayo, No Butter! (2024)

FAQs

What does butter do in biscuit 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.

"These turn nice and golden and have a slightly crisp outside with a fluffy, buttery inside. I like these because they taste so good and are healthier than the traditional version, using margarine instead of shortening, butter, or lard. Buttermilk can be subbed for milk for a tangier flavor.

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.

Falling apart

The likelihood here is that your recipe needs a bit more liquid, or your recipe has too high a ratio of flour. Be sparing with any flour you put on the work surface to roll your dough too. Too much will dry it out and cause the cookie to crumble (so to speak).

Of course, you can still use oil to make biscuits in a pinch, but do think twice if you don't want to sacrifice too much flavor and texture. If you're looking for dairy-free alternatives, semi-solid fats like vegan butter, coconut oil, and plant-based shortening or margarine are worth considering.

Yes, you can make bread without butter or oil and still achieve a similar texture and taste as normal bread. Many bread recipes are actually oil or butter-free. The key to achieving good texture and taste lies in using the right ingredients and techniques.

In baking, melted margarine could work in recipes that call for melted butter, but in recipes that call for softened butter, swapping in tub margarine may change the texture; for example, cakes will be less tender, and cookies will generally spread out more and be less crisp.

Crisco may be beneficial for other baking applications, but for biscuit making, butter is the ultimate champion!

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

Is buttermilk or heavy cream better for biscuits? ›

Buttermilk can produce better results when baking biscuits than using regular milk or cream. Buttermilk is acidic and when it is combined with baking soda, it creates a chemical reaction that produces carbon dioxide gas, which causes the dough to rise and gives the biscuits a light and flaky texture.

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

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.

But if you chill your pan of biscuits in the fridge before baking, not only will the gluten relax (yielding more tender biscuits), the butter will harden up. And the longer it takes the butter to melt as the biscuits bake, the more chance they have to rise high and maintain their shape. So, chill... and chill.

While over-handling your biscuit dough can make your baked goods turn out like hockey pucks, under-mixing it while you're still adding all of your ingredients can result in floury or grainy biscuits.

Butter, technically a dough enrichment, tenderizes bread dough and limits gluten development, yielding a softer, more tender crumb and a richer flavor. The butter in this sourdough babka dough makes the interior tender—and delicious. Photo by Maurizio Leo.

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

As we saw with the liquid experiment, "drier" biscuits tend to rise more (in this case, the biscuits with less fat tend to rise more). in this case, it appears that the biscuit structure is just a lot more stable (structurally speaking) when there's less butter.