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