How Does the Butter to Flour Ratio Affect Biscuits? (2024)

FAQs

How Does the Butter to Flour Ratio Affect Biscuits? ›

The biscuit with very little butter wasn't as soft and flaky, but it was more structurally sound. Conclusion: None of these biscuits were bad, but again, the middle option seems to be the best choice. A ratio of 1/2 cup of butter to 2 cups of flour (1:4) seems to work pretty well.

Butter enriches baked goods by contributing tenderness and moistness, and is responsible for the flakiness in biscuits, pie crusts, and puff pastry. Because of its superior flavor, most bakers select unsalted butter over all other fats for use in baking.

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.

Ruhlman's ratio couldn't be simpler — 3 parts flour, 1 part fat, 2 parts liquid, with a little salt and baking powder to add flavor and leavening, respectively.

Some of the recipes I've seen with White Lily flour use 2 cups of flour with 4 tablespoons of butter, and some use 2 cups of flour with 8 tablespoons of butter.

in this case, it appears that the biscuit structure is just a lot more stable (structurally speaking) when there's less butter. When you get a lot of butter, you're kind of filling your biscuit with holes, which makes it unable to bear its own weight to rise very far.

Use Cold Butter for Biscuits

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. We default to our Land O Lakes® Salted Butter when baking biscuits.

Heavy cream provides rich butterfat that gives the biscuits tenderness and flavor, as well as moisture from its water content. The formula requires minimal mixing, reducing the risk of too much gluten development.

High-fat butter, such as Kerrygold Butter, is best. The rich fat from the butter releases water when the biscuits are baking which is what contributes to the beautiful layers and flakiness that we love about biscuits.

What is the basic biscuit formula? ›

The basic formula is as follows: 2 cups AP flour, 2 teaspoons baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon baking soda, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 6 tablespoons butter, 1/2 cup milk—and the add-in(s) of your choice. I'm giving you two savory options. The red is a sun-dried tomato and cheddar biscuit with paprika and a touch of cayenne.

The two keys to success in making the best biscuits are handling the dough as little as possible as well as using very cold solid fat (butter, shortening, or lard) and cold liquid.

*Substitute buttermilk, light cream, or heavy cream for the whole milk, if you prefer; use enough of whatever liquid you choose to bring the dough together readily, without you having to work it too much. The higher-fat liquid you use, the more tender and richer-tasting your biscuits will be.

The roux. You will want 1 tablespoon of unsalted butter to 2 tablespoons of plain white flour. If you want to be even more precise, you want 1 weight unit of butter to 1 weight unit of flour (say, 10 grams - 10 grams), but I find that the 1 Tbs - 2 Tbs ratio works fine and is much easier to measure.

The job of butter in baking (besides being delicious) is to give richness, tenderness and structure to cookies, cakes, pies and pastries. We alter the way butter works in a recipe by changing its temperature and choosing when to combine it with the other ingredients.

Flour lends structure to baked goods, like cakes, biscuits, pastry and bread, with a range in protein content to suit the purpose and desired outcome.

As the dough is baked, the butter melts and creates steam, trapping it in the dough and creating air pockets. Once the dough has cooled, these air pockets become delicate layers of flaky dough. By this point, you've realized that butter adds more than flavor—it develops texture.

They found that the thickness of biscuits was significantly higher when hydrogenated fat or oil was used, while biscuit produced with bakery shortening had better surface characteristics and higher crispness.

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 most important factor affecting the physical and processability quality of the biscuits are its chemical components and the interaction of these components to each other. The most important of these components are starch, protein and pentosans.