Has anyone ever tried half butter and half shortening (lard included.) The recipe I use for snickerdoodles is like this and makes for my absolute favorite snickerdoodles. Wonder how it would work for crust.
I have done it but still prefer lard.
I grew up on Southern biscuits, pie crusts, etc. all with Crisco. I am sorry to be a snob but butter really is better. I feel like Southern cooks came to over-rely on Crisco after it outlived much of its usefulness. It was such a boon to their parents and grandparents, being cheaper than butter, and something that keeps on the shelf forever whether or not you have a working fridge. These are great things, and Crisco biscuits are far FAR better than no biscuits, but now that we (mostly) all have refrigerators and can (mostly) all afford butter (for now), it seems like the obvious way to go. I use a food processor; I can see how it’s much easier to mash Crisco into the flour with a fork, if you don’t have a processor.
Southern cooks tend to also swear by self-rising flour (for my mom it was Martha White; she used to pack a suitcase full of it whenever she came back from visiting her folks) but it too isn’t magic, it’s just a convenience. Perhaps the magic is in the specific variety of flour, but baking powder/soda and salt are the same whether pre-mixed or added at home.
As others have noted, the thing I really had to teach myself was to work the dough a bit. There’s the totally valid idea that overworking pastry is bad. Take this to an extreme: therefore the less handling the better; therefore the ideal is NO handling. Wrong. This produces biscuits that don’t hold together. It needs a little gluten development, just not a lot. I’m finding that folding/patting a specific, counted number of times (YMMV) is an easy way to impose mindless control over that part of the process. 4 pats/3 folds seems to be the right number for me.
@Beckdawrek I knew you’d be all over this thread before I popped in. May I ask, do you pre-heat the skillet, or put the whole thing in cold?
I used to do that but prefer all butter
Sorry, I know that now. I didn’t know it when I was a kid. But thanks.
Pre-heat with about a teaspoon of lard
Not much. Or your bisciuts will be greasy.
Oh. Sorry..didn’t mean to offend.
There’s my problem! We recently moved to an Irish butter and the rising issues started then.
also Missouri
I thought McD switched from beef tallow because of lawsuit?
No offense. Didn’t want you to think I was an ignoramus!