Olive Oil Biscuits Recipes - Biscuits Made Without Butter (2024)

FAQs

Can you substitute olive oil for butter in biscuits? ›

As a general rule of thumb, substitute three-quarters of the butter in a recipe with olive oil. In other words: If a baking recipe calls for a stick of butter (8 tablespoons), for example, use 6 tablespoons of olive oil. (Click here to see a conversion table.)

If you must substitute, use a solid vegetable shortening, such as Crisco. If you can use the butter-flavored type, the taste will not be affected to the same degree. Butter gives the best taste, but a vegetable fat is satisfactory for your biscuits.

Why Olive Oil As A Substitute For Butter Makes Health Sense. Butter is mostly a saturated fat. Olive oil contains unsaturated fats (the healthy kind) which is why dipping some freshly made crusty bread into to a quality olive oil is not just one of life's simple taste pleasures.

Just as important as the fat is the liquid used to make your biscuits. Our Buttermilk Biscuit recipe offers the choice of using milk or buttermilk. Buttermilk is known for making biscuits tender and adding a zippy tang, so we used that for this test.

Margarine and Plant-Based Butter

Developed as butter alternatives, these are likely the most accurate substitutes. They work well in just about any baking recipe that requires butter, such as cookies, cakes, biscuits, and more.

Substitution Tip

Substitute three-quarters of the butter in a recipe with olive oil. For example, if a recipe calls for one stick of butter (8 tablespoons), use 6 tablespoons of oil.

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.

How much vegetable oil equals one 1 stick of butter? One stick of butter equals about 93.75 ml or 6 tablespoons of liquid vegetable oil.

Olive oil whipped cream will have your table buzzing and you can use this pantry staple to turn any dessert into a restaurant-quality dish in a few minutes.

What is healthier olive oil or butter? ›

Though butter does have nutritional value, olive oil might be the better choice. According to the Harvard School of Public Health, liquid fats like olive oil are rich in heart-healthy unsaturated fats, while butter has more saturated fats.

For soft and fluffy biscuits, blend the liquid and dry ingredients just until the dough "resembles cottage cheese," Sonoskus says. This stops you from activating too much gluten in the flour and ending up with a tougher biscuit that doesn't rise as high.

Use Cold Butter for Biscuits

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.

Southern cooks have several tricks when it comes to making tender and delicious biscuits, from the cutters they use, to the type and amount of liquid incorporated, to the number of kneads required to turn out a perfect dough. The not-so-secret ingredient they rely upon is soft wheat flour.

Oils and fats are used in a baked product to reduce the development of gluten giving the foods a crumbly texture. The fats and oils break down the gluten into “shorter strands” hence the term shorteners. Coating the flour in fat prevents the flour from absorbing water hindering the formation of gluten.

Baking with Olive Oil

If substituting olive oil for vegetable oil (or another cooking oil) in your baking recipe, you can use a 1:1 ratio. Because of olive oil's distinct flavor, it might affect the flavor of the baked product.