We’ve talked about buttermilk before. Fromfried chicken brinetoperfectly easy pie, it is an essential ingredient in any Southern pantry. But what if abiscuitcraving strikes and you’re flat out of the stuff? Even worse, you don’t have any yogurt or kefir (does anyone here drink kefir?) or any other tangy dairy product laying around. (This happens to me all the time.)
Can you still make biscuits? What about using cream instead? And what do those liquids do anyway? It’s time to dive back into some more biscuit science.To help learn a bit more about the differences between buttermilk and cream, I made the same biscuit recipe twice, once using buttermilk and once using heavy cream. Here’s what happened.
As we’ve discussed before, buttermilk was historically the liquid left over from churning butter. In the past, butter was made from cultured cream, so the resulting buttermilk also carried with it a slightly acidic tang. Today, most buttermilks you’ll find at the grocery are simply cultured low-fat milk; they’ve actually got more in common with yogurt than traditional buttermilk.
When you’re making biscuits, you use buttermilk for its acidity as well as its fat and liquid content. The acidity is used, in conjunction with leaveners, to help the dough rise. Typically, you’ll find buttermilk used in recipes that also include baking soda as well as baking powder; the acid from the buttermilk reacts with the alkaline baking soda, causing it to give off carbon dioxide. Baking powder will also react with buttermilk’s acidity, but just a touch; it uses the liquid content, as well as the heat of the oven, to give its leavening power.
Buttermilk also adds a pleasant tanginess to baked biscuits, and its relatively low levels of fat make it work in recipes that call for any kind of fat, from butter to shortening, and even cream. (Yes, cream can be used as both a liquid and a fat. To learn more about its use as a fat, read our story on Touch of Grace biscuits.)
What does all of this mean? Buttermilk biscuits, like the ones pictured,tend to have a tall rise and robust flavor. Buttermilk biscuits can be both flaky or fluffy, depending on the fat used. Other cultured dairy products, like the aforementioned yogurt and kefir can also work well in place of buttermilk; look for low-fat versions instead of full fat for best results. (And if you’re using yogurt, you’ll want to thin it out a bit with water until it reaches buttermilk consistency.)
Cream
Cream biscuits are loved by many people for their ease. If you’ve got a bag of self-rising flour and a pint of cream, you can have cream biscuits in a matter of minutes — no butter needed. (And yes, you can make them using all-purpose flour as well; just add baking powder and a bit of salt.) These simple, two-ingredient recipes make use of cream as both a fat and a liquid ingredient. They land on the very tender and crumbly end of the biscuit spectrum, and are, in this writer’s opinion, the best way to use cream in biscuit baking.
Many disagree. There are plenty of cream biscuit recipes hanging out on the internet that simply substitute cream for buttermilk. This step adds another big dose of fat to your biscuits that, honestly, isn’t warranted. As you can see in the picture, biscuits with this much fat in them simply look greasy. They also, strangely enough, taste kind of dry, and they have a stiff, far too flaky texture
If you are going to substitute a non-cultured liquid into your biscuits, I’d strongly recommend using low-fat milk, or even whole milk, instead of cream. Both will give you a more pleasant biscuit, with just the right amount of fat that you’ll still want to slather the inside with butter. Or if you’ve got to use cream, bake a biscuit that doesn’t include any additional fat, such as this one.
Buttermilk also adds a subtle tang. Cream biscuits are made with heavy cream. Cream biscuits are beloved because they're incredibly easy-to-make. But, since cream is much milder than buttermilk, they won't be quite as flavorful (unless you incorporate more spices and seasonings).
*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.
Baking with Buttermilk: Scrumptious buttermilk biscuits and pancakes often appear on brunch menus of gourmet restaurants – and for good reason. Buttermilk (fermented milk) brings a rich flavor to baked goods without adding fat.
If your recipe relies on buttermilk as a leavening agent, heavy cream won't do. Buttermilk has a sour taste. Sometimes, bakers add buttermilk because of its unique sour taste. This is especially true in biscuits and scones.
Buttermilk adds a tangy flavor to the biscuits and makes them slightly more tender. No food processor: Add the dry ingredients to a large bowl, and use your hands or a pastry cutter to cut the butter into the flour until crumbly.
Dry and crumbly biscuits are often caused by adding too much flour. Remember, don't scoop and drop your flour – use a spoon to sprinkle the flour into the measuring cup, then level it off with a spatula.
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.
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.
Make a batch of the basic biscuit dough, then chill until firm, roll out and cut out shapes as above. Bake on a non-stick baking tray for 10-12 minutes until pale golden. Carefully transfer to a wire rack to cool and crisp up.
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.
When the fat is cut too small, after baking there will be more, smaller air pockets left by the melting fat. The result is a baked product that crumbles. When cutting in shortening and other solid fats, cut only until the pieces of shortening are 1/8- to 1/4-inch in size.
“One of the primary differences between buttermilk and heavy cream is the fat content,” Laing said. Heavy cream contains 36% fat on average, while the fat content of buttermilk is only 1%. Both are thicker than standard milk, but the substantial fat in heavy cream also gives it “a slightly sweet flavor.”
Over-mixing the dough can cause flat biscuits. Something that can help with fluffy biscuits is to bake them in a cast iron skillet touching. They can help each other 'climb' higher, though this recipe does not require this. Also, be sure that you do not twist the cutter as you stamp out your biscuits.
What's Special About These Biscuits. Since they're made just with cream and no butter, these cream biscuits have a super soft and almost airy texture. They are divine straight out of the oven and they don't keep as well as other biscuits, so I usually only make them when I'm planning to serve them right away.
“One of the primary differences between buttermilk and heavy cream is the fat content,” Laing says. Heavy cream contains “36% fat” on average, whereas the fat content of buttermilk is only 1%.
The reason: The butter has not been incorporated evenly, leaving pockets of your cooked biscuits that are dry, dense, and filled with flour. But even if you properly mix your biscuits, if your butter pieces are too large or inconsistently sized they may not get distributed evenly throughout the dough.
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.
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