Kitchen Experiments: What Flour Makes The Best Biscuits? (2024)

FAQs

Kitchen Experiments: What Flour Makes The Best Biscuits? ›

White wheat in general is around 9-12% protein, while the hard reds are 11-15%. As far as brands of flour, White Lily

Cake flour will give you a lighter, fluffier biscuit, but the outer crust won't have as much bite to it. Conversely, all-purpose flour will provide more bite, but it'll be a drier, less airy biscuit. The solution: Use half cake flour and half all-purpose flour.

Plain flour is an all-purpose flour with a lower protein and gluten content. This makes the flour softer and ideal for cakes, pastries, thickening sauces, and biscuits.

All purpose flour is a bit of higher protein content than self-rising flour which is made from a soft winter wheat. This is why Southerners swear by using self-rising flour in their biscuits. If you don't have any you can make your own self-rising flour.

Typically when baking sourdough or French baguettes, you'll want a higher-protein flour, but when making delicate pastries (especially pillowy biscuits and flaky pie crusts), a low-protein, low-gluten flour results in a lighter, fluffier baked good with a greater rise.

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.

If your biscuits are floury and grainy…

The reason: The butter has not been incorporated evenly, leaving pockets of your cooked biscuits that are dry, dense, and filled with flour.

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.

Self-raising flour is used to make muffins, pancakes, or tender biscuits.

A flour sifter was a necessary item to have if the home cook wanted tender cakes and biscuits. Today's recipes usually don't call for sifting flour, but it is still a good idea to have a sifter on hand for those few occasions when you do need it.

What is the Southern flour for biscuits? ›

Southern buttermilk biscuit recipes typically call for White Lily flour, a low-protein brand primarily available in the southern states that makes for ultra-tender, melt-in-your-mouth biscuits.

As a general rule, don't use self raising flour if there is another leavening agent called for in the recipe such as yeast or baking soda.

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.

White wheat in general is around 9-12% protein, while the hard reds are 11-15%. As far as brands of flour, White Lily “all-purpose” flour has been my go-to for biscuit making. It's a soft red winter wheat, and the low protein and low gluten content keep biscuits from becoming too dense.

Buttermilk adds a nice tang to the biscuit flavor and helps them rise better.

Bleached and unbleached flour can be used interchangeably. Some believe that bleached flour is better when you want your baked good to have a really bright white color, like when you make a white cake; or a lighter, fluffier texture, like when you want to make extra fluffy pancakes.

Self-raising flour is used to make muffins, pancakes, or tender biscuits.

All-purpose flour is best used for: cookies, muffins, bread, pie crusts, pancakes, biscuits, pizza dough, and pasta.