In baking butter is shortening, all fats are shortening. If you want to use
butter as shortening in your biscuits go right ahead, but I think plain
hydrogenated shortening makes a better cleaner tasting biscuit without
adding any flavor of it's own... when I spread good fresh butter on biscuits
I don't want that fresh buttery flavor contaminated by previously baked
butter that's been overly oxidized by being exposed to high oven
temperatures. There are very few breads, if any, that benefit from using
butter as a shortening... even in butter topped breads the butter is
drizzled on after baking... typical bread baking temperatrures will burn
butter. Butter works as a shortening in pastry and sweet doughs but not in
breads

"Damaeus" > wrote in message
...
>I accidentally posted this first to rec.food-cooking....here's a post for
> this group:
>
> I like biscuits now and then, and I got the itch to have some a while back
> when I was watching the Food Network and saw Tyler Florence's version. He
> shocked me when he said to use vegetable shortening, his reason being that
> he found that butter tends to burn, while shortening doesn't.
>
> Well, here's the recipe, first of all:
>
> http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/t...pe2/index.html
>
> Okay, I tried the recipe. I have to say they were not unedible, but
> nowhere near the quality of biscuits I had made using butter instead of
> shortening. These biscuits came out reminding me of store-bought, canned
> biscuits. I blame the shortening, because all shortening is, is
> hydrogenated and partially hydrogenated oils. I was skeptical of them for
> that reason alone.
>
> That said, I had normally made biscuits with plain whole milk, not
> buttermilk. We normally don't keep buttermilk in the house, but my
> roommate had a craving for fried chicken with buttermilk batter, so since
> we had some left, I made buttermilk biscuits, then buttermilk pancakes a
> few days later. The biscuits did rise nicely, however. But they turned
> out with a very yellow color inside, which surprised me greatly. They
> were quite white going in, but you'd think I'd laced them with turmeric,
> they came out so yellow. (I used unbleached flour.)
>
> As for the doneness, there was an even, brown crust all the way around it,
> that was almost cookie-like in texture, about a millimeter thick. I
> layered it as he suggested on TV, and as a result, they simply pulled
> apart like a biscuit-bun, no need for a knife to cut it in half.
>
> Once I get some more flour, I'm going to try buttermilk biscuits again
> before it expires, using butter instead of shortening to compare.
>
> What is your experience with using butter versus shortening? So far, I'm
> not impressed with shortening, but I may have to blame the buttermilk if
> using butter in the next go-around results in the same type of experience.
>
> Damaeus