How To Make Classic Buttermilk Biscuits (2024)

FAQs

What is the secret to a good biscuit? ›

It's super simple and makes tall, fluffy biscuits ready for breakfast, sandwiches, and more! The secret to the best biscuits is using very cold butter and baking powder. We've made a lot of biscuits, but this easy biscuits recipe is the one we turn to the most (they are so fluffy!).

What's the Difference Between Buttermilk Biscuits and Regular Biscuits? As the names might suggest, regular biscuits do not contain buttermilk, while these do. Regular biscuits are typically prepared with milk or water instead. Buttermilk adds a nice tang to the biscuit flavor and helps them rise better.

Heavy cream provides rich butterfat that gives the biscuits tenderness and flavor, as well as moisture from its water content. The formula requires minimal mixing, reducing the risk of too much gluten development.

Whichever flour you use, make sure to MEASURE CORRECTLY. Too much flour will result in dense, dry, and tough biscuits.

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.

*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.

Compared to cultured buttermilk, plain milk is watery, making the dough so heavy and wet that it oozes into a puddle, turning the biscuits flat and dense.

Here's the Reason Biscuits in the South Really Are Better

The not-so-secret ingredient they rely upon is soft wheat flour. Soft wheat thrives in temperate, moist climates like that of the mid-Atlantic, so cooks in those areas have had access to its special flour for a long time.

Use good butter and dairy

Because biscuit recipes call for so few ingredients, it's important that every one is high quality—you'll really taste the difference. Catherine recommends splurging a bit on a grass-fed butter or European-style butter (now's the time to reach for Kerrygold!).

If your biscuits are falling apart…

If this sounds familiar, you could be adding too much flour to your dough without knowing it, disrupting the ratio of dry to wet ingredients.

Which milk is best for biscuits? ›

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.

A hot oven helps biscuits bake—and rise—quickly. We recommend 475˚F for 15 minutes. Remove them from the oven as soon as they are lightly brown.

Whenever you're working with buttery doughs like biscuits, pie crust, shortbread, and the like, you're constantly reminded to chill the dough frequently, as well as chill the dough before baking time. Baking biscuits directly from frozen also keeps the biscuits from spreading and flattening out.

While biscuits receive some leavening power from chemical sources — baking powder and baking soda — the difference between serviceable and greatness comes from the extra rise that steam provides. In order to generate steam, the oven must be set at a minimum of 425 degrees for at least 10 minutes prior to baking.

But tangy buttermilk is one of the hallmarks of any good buttermilk biscuit, so you don't want to completely neutralize the acid in your biscuit dough. Instead, you can use a bit of soda because the immediate chemical reaction with the buttermilk gives the biscuits a big lift right out of the gate.

In general, a rolled biscuit of desirable quality has a golden brown, smooth and crisp crust without brown specks, and a tender and flaky crumb; it is expected to be symmetrical in shape with a high height, flat top and straight side (Learning and Food Resource of Oregon State University, 2012, see web references).

The two keys to success in making the best biscuits are handling the dough as little as possible as well as using very cold solid fat (butter, shortening, or lard) and cold liquid. When the biscuits hit the oven, the cold liquid will start to evaporate creating steam which will help our biscuits get very tall.

Keep the oven hot.

When baking buttery treats like biscuits, the key is to bake them at a temperature where the water in the butter turns quickly to steam. This steam is a big part of how the biscuits achieve their height, as it evaporates up and out.