I think I found the perfect biscuit recipe. Now I know that biscuit recipes are pretty standard but this one was different somehow. Beautiful rise, flaky, great tasting. Plus I modified it slightly and it came out even better.
Honey instead of sugar. Adds a subtle flavor and since honey is hygroscopic the biscuits were and stayed moist.
Grass-fed butter. Not in the recipe but it is what we use at home. GF butter melts at a lower temperature than normal butter and I really feel this made a difference in the rise and flakyness.
Cake flour. Didn’t use it this time but will on the next one.
The recipe called for just bringing the dough together to avoid developing the gluten. What I did was used my rolling pin and did the roll and fold a few times. Sooooooo many layers I actually had a couple biscuits rise too much and bend over while baking.
Air-cooled baking sheet with silicone mat. I know many people prefer a cast-iron pan and I’ll try that next time but my sheet/mat combo gave a very consistent bake. The bottoms may have been a touch underdone and in hindsight I probably could have left them in another 2 minutes and gotten the top a little more brown.
OK. Let’s have your biscuit successes or failures.
Extra SD dollarbucks to whoever has the perfect Red Lobster cheddar bay biscuit copycat recipe
I tried all manner of biscuit recipes, even buying Southern Biscuits cookbook and ordering White Lily flour. The best method was the simplest, as in most things. I use a food processor. Make sure the butter is cold and cut into 1/4" pieces and make sure the buttermilk is cold. Put the flour, baking powder and baking soda and salt in the processor and pulse until mixed. Add the butter and lightly pulse, leaving bits and pieces. Add the buttermilk and pulse till blended. Place the sticky dough on a lightly floured board, pat down, fold, pat down, fold, pat down, fold, final pat down to about 3/4" thick. Quickly cut out the biscuits without twisting the cutter, place on the baking sheet and bake.
I love Irish butter, but it’s too creamy and won’t hold up like plain old OTC butter. The chunks of butter are critical to getting flaky biscuits and Irish butter liquifies at a lower temp.
Not biscuits. Sorry I was too lazy that day. I chose corn bread ( Johnny cake to my mil 'cause I had sugar in). I just got a cast iron skillet at Aldis and hadn’t beenable to make corn bread “properly” ever because I didn’t have a cast iron skillet. Anyway, I make it like mil always did 1:1 ratio flour/cornmeal, and a big puddle of oil in the bttom of the pan. Sadly this time someone bought 1% milk. It was the only difference exept for the skillet. It was very dry. I’m going to try again today.
Mine improved immeasurably when I did the slight kneading/multiple foldings over of the dough, too. The biscuits became way flakier this way. And letting the patted-out square of dough rest in the fridge or freezer for twenty minutes before cutting out the biscuits also really improved the final product.
Oh, and one tip I discovered by accident: one time I was out of buttermilk, but I had plain Greek full-fat yogurt in the fridge. I used that instead, and man, the biscuits came out way taller and puffier.
I may well try that. Thank you. I usually make cb sans the sugar for cornbread dressing. If that’s ever dry I wouldn’t notice because of the added broth.
For cornbread use coarse ground corn meal. Add some corn oil, but not to grease the pan because it will burn. You can use corn flour instead of wheat flour and corn starch instead of eggs.
My family and I are being climate refugees at my mom’s house, and I made biscuits for breakfast this morning. My method is almost exactly like the @Chefguy method. I have the joy of cooking recipe memorized.
Because my mom does not have biscuit cutters, or at least not that I could find, I cut them into squares. They laminated and roses beautifully, and were great with butter and honey.
I did that for pie crust and you’re right, the best way to do that. But according to that I did it wrong on the biscuits. Butter was out of the fridge and started melting as I worked it. Used a pastry cutter.
Yeah, just like grass-fed butter but dammit my biscuits were flaky like I’ve never made before. So why did it work?
Perhaps the honey slowed down the melting? Flakiness is a result of the water in the butter turning to steam, IIRC. Whatever you’re doing, I wouldn’t change it, as you’re getting the right results.
America’s Test Kitchen has a relatively new recipe that is the easiest I have seen, and breaks all the rules. You have 5 dry ingredients: flour, baking powder (for lift), baking soda (for flavor and browning), a little sugar and a little salt. To these whisked together, you add only heavy cream, 36% butterfat – the trick is, you heat the cream to about 95 degrees in the microwave, which melts the butterfat in it, and makes the cream thin enough to incorporate all the dry ingredients and leave a scoopable dough (don’t try it without heating). Use a 1/4-cup steel measure, sprayed with vegetable oil spray, to scoop out the biscuits, and when you drop them vertically on the sheet, it makes a shape kind of like a stamped biscuit. Brush on melted butter right out of the oven, before serving.
I made these a couple of days ago (half-recipe because there’s only two of us) and it was as easy as advertised, and the resulting biscuits were excellent – it is a tender biscuit, rather than flaky, but there is a crack in the middle that makes it easy to split. Yum.
I learned to make biscuits from an old Southerner here in North Carolina. No butter - not traditional since poor Southerners of the past didn’t have it. Lard or Crisco is the fat (I use Crisco, though lard sure is good - too bad TubaDiva is no longer here to tell us about that ). If you’ve got butter you can baste it on top after they come out of the oven. They’re also considered a “Sunday” dish - cornbread is the daily bread.
Also, the rise isn’t everything - in eastern NC they make ‘flat biscuits’ and those are mighty fine too. Good with molasses. Miss Lillie’s Biscuits.
I first tried making biscuits during the pandemic lock downs, using the Joy of cooking recipe. It was a big hit with my family. I, too, cut them into squares. I have a giant knife my father gave me, large enough to cut the dough all the way across with a single down stroke. It worked great. Lovely flaky laminated biscuits. I like them plain, or with a little honey. I’m not sure why the usual recipe is round. The squares are easy and there isn’t any wasted dough.
I made biscuits for the cafe I worked at and I really liked the recipe. It was a fairly standard type, but used all butter and not shortening. I LOVE good biscuits, the baking smell is second only to good bread.
I rarely go to the trouble of rolling out biscuits. I’ll press dough into a flat rectangle on a cutting board, maybe fold it over once, then cut into squares. Usually when I make biscuits for breakfast it’s because I’m really hungry, and impatience goes along with that. If I’m making biscuits and gravy then I’ll have time to do the biscuits right while the gravy is cooking.
). If you’ve got butter you can baste it on top after they come out of the oven. They’re also considered a “Sunday” dish - cornbread is the daily bread.