Using applesauce to sub for butter in biscuits I know that the general rule is that you can use half the amount of butter or oil a recipe calls for and replace the other half with applesauce. My question is, can you do this for baked goods that are very butter dependent, such as biscuits? By biscuits I mean American Southern-style biscuits, which are mainly flour, butter, and some type of riser. I was just going to try it and see what happened, but I figured I'd ask the experts before wasting ingredients.
Adding butter to biscuits or bread is what allows for that flakiness in the crust and that creamy texture in the bread itself. Lard would give you the same effect -- it's pretty much the saturated fat that makes the biscuit taste so great. Substituting applesauce for the butter won't give you the same results. It will be edible, but it will be more like a quickbread or cake than the biscuits you were hoping for.