Everyone has a favorite style of biscuit. The word in itself is rather a blanket for soft pillowy pieces of bread that can be eaten with anything from sausage gravy to soups and stews. One of our favorites, the classic buttermilk biscuit, isn't hard to make at all — see how easy it is with this quick tutorial.
This recipe is intended to be made in a food processor. If you don't own one, no worries, we've included hackable instructions below to get the job done. The entire goal is to touch the dough a little as possible and to keep the butter as frozen as possible. If at any point you get called away or things feel a little warm, don't worry, just pop your work bowl into the freezer for a few minutes before carrying on!
The best part about these biscuits is that no matter what shape and size biscuits you cut, they all bake up warm and buttery, you can even hear them sizzle when you pull them out of the oven. So don't worry about making exact sizes and to create the tallest biscuits you can, cut quick and with something sharp (no glasses or dull cookie cutters).
What You Need
Ingredients:
1 cup all purpose flour
1 cup cake flour (or 3/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon All Purpose Flour)
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons granulated sugar
3/4 teaspoon salt
8 tablespoons (1 stick) frozen unsalted butter
3/4 cup buttermilk
Equipment
Parchment paper
Baking sheet
Food processor OR bowl
Instructions
1. Prep & Preheat: Place a layer of parchment paper across the bottom and up 2 sides of an 8"x8" pan. Preheat oven to 450°F degrees.
2. Mix Dry Ingredients: In a medium bowl (or bowl of food processor), mix together dry ingredients and stir with a whisk to combine.
3. Cube Butter: Using a bench scraper or large knife, cut a frozen stick of butter down the middle length wise, letting the two pieces fall side by side. Next cut each of those pieces in half length wise, creating 4 equal(ish) sections. Next, cutting horizontally, make small cubes with your bench scraper, touching the butter as little as possible to remove it from the utensil. Add to bowl of food processor. (Note: If not using a food processor, use a box grater and shred your butter just like you would a block of cheese. Work quickly and refreeze if needed before continuing.)
4. Pulse: Pulse food processor 8-10 times until meal is finely ground. Make sure unlock lid and tap inside the bowl to eliminate a counter covered with flour.
5. Combine: Pour flour and butter mixture into a separate bowl and add in buttermilk all at once. Using a spatula or fork, mix gently until most the dry mix has been incorporated. Dump out onto a floured surface and mold gently to form an 8x8(ish) square.
6. Cut: Using your bench scraper or long knife, cut quickly through the dough into 9 pieces (3 wide and 3 tall). They will transfer straight to the pan, but will be loose in doing so. That's ok, as they bake they'll come together!
7. Bake: If oven is not yet preheated, place in freezer until oven is to temperature. Bake for 10-12 minutes or until tops are golden brown (emphasis on the golden). Remove from oven and using parchment paper, transfer to a non porous surface (or put down a few paper towels to catch and excess butter) to cool.
Additional Notes:
• Total Cost: Most of the ingredients for this recipe should already be found in your pantry. If you don't often stock buttermilk in the house (not many do), you can sour regular milk with a little lemon juice, just allow a few extra minutes for it to take. This recipe takes literal pennies to make and comes together quick!
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(Images: Sarah Rae Trover)
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Since I usually don't buy buttermilk, would this work if I used the milk and vinegar substitution?
Nope, nope, nope. Biscuits are NOT easy to make, they are PROHIBITIVELY DIFFICULT.
Dang I love me some biscuits. Pretending they're impossible to make is my only choice.
joyosity- I've never tried it with just vinegar, I've only ever used lemon juice or cream of tartar to do my dirty work for me. You can also buy a carton and freeze it off in 1/4 cup measurements in muffin tins to be used when you need it... that way you don't have to worry about it going bad in your fridge!
Extremely important question: Can you make drop biscuits with this dough? I don't immediately see why not, but sometimes my intuition is fuzzy.
Growing up, drop biscuits were the only biscuits in my life. I still have trouble cottoning to square ones.
this sounds like you could just make GIANT batches and store them individually in the freezer until you want to bake some.
Drop biscuits from this dough will be a little tricky. If you're set on making them in drop fashion, I might encourage you to increase the amount of buttermilk by several tablespoons, giving them a wetter surface so you can pull off chunks to "drop."
Bailey P - you can roll the dough and cut it into rounds, but I don't see why this wouldn't work as drop biscuits.
I just taught a friend how to make buttermilk biscuits this weekend! Of course, his had cheese in them, because cheesy biscuits trump all other biscuits.
caseoftornados - Rolling of the dough is discouraged as it will overwork the dough. If you can't get past the idea of shaping with your hands, make sure to freeze the dough for 10 minutes before going into the oven.
hmo - They are perfect for freezing, remove as much air from your packaging method as possible and freeze them individually so they don't stick together!
sarahrae, what would happen if you used cream in lieu of the buttermilk? I rarely keep buttermilk in my house.
I usually use vinegar if I'm souring milk as a substitute for buttermilk and it works just fine.
I think you could use King Arthur Whole Wheat Flour for the all-purpose part, but I am not much of a baker and know precision can be critical...Could you use whole wheat?
thechenster - The buttermilk reacts with the leaveners, allowing them to do better, while cream will add a bit more fat into the mix, creating more places for the leavening to take place — long way around, it should turn out just fine :)
JD523 - I haven't made them with Whole Wheat, though I should give it a go! I would suggest upping your baking powder by 1tsp and baking soda by 1/4 tsp to help give it a bit more lift. (though King Arthur's isn't as heavy as some, so you might not need to add quite as much!)
You definitely have a little less leeway with baking, but it's certainly not as precise as you'd think. Just search for biscuit recipes (or any other for that matter) and you'll see how different they can be. Leavening is the key and with buttermilk you generally use more baking soda; baking powder is just baking soda with the acidic part already mixed in.
As with most recipes, you could vary the butter anywhere from 3 tbsp to 8 tbsp, just don't eliminate it all together. I'd also suggest leaving the butter in the proverbial "pea sized" pieces and a couple quick kneeds on the counter. this stretches out the butter so that when it steams during baking it will create the flaky layers (if that's your thing). I've made biscuits with all cake flour and they turn out super delicate, but maybe I'll try the mix like this recipe.
Also, I'm a fan of using yogurt (thanks Mark Bittman!). You get a delicate tasting biscuit that's still tangy and just plain yummy. It tastes different than buttermilk of course but somehow it just works and I've really come to prefer them.
urrgghh - You can add 1/4 cup - 1/2 cup yogurt to this dough if you wish, it can take the addition and it's wonderful, though kneading is strongly discouraged. In fact, you need to touch it only to form it into a square to cut them apart. Kneading will stretch the butter, but will also shrink the pockets available for the release for gases in the leavening process!
Can I use milk instead of buttermilk? and if so what amount? thanks :)
As mentioned IN THE RECIPE you can make buttermilk by adding lemon juice to milk and letting it sit for 10 min (I use 1 tbsp for every cup of milk).
I tried this biscuit recipe tonight and I love it! It eliminates most of the mess usually associated with biscuits. I made two changes however: 1) I added the milk right into the food processor and pulsed a few times to bring it together. 2) I dumped the whole thing right into the parchment lined pan and patted it out even with floured hands. I made the cuts in the pan. Worked out just fine and dandy.
Thanks Sarah Rae, this recipe is definitely going to become a staple.
I can't wait to give this a try with cream. I will report back!
just made these this morning, using whole wheat pastry in place of regular, and used the dump method in the pan, making one giant biscuit. Minimal handling, these came out so tender and fall apart good! It was kind of hard to tell when the top was golden since I used whole wheat, but it took about 20 minutes to cook.
Oh I meant whole wheat pastry flour in place of the white pastry flour called for. I kept the white ap flour. very good!
What are the weights for the ingredients in this, particularly the flour? (At a loss for converting cake flour...)
Thank you for the recipe! They are so easy to make and so delicious!
Wow - made this tonight and the results were divine!!! Used 2 cups minus 2 tbsp all purpose flour bc had no cake flour; and did the lemon/ milk sub for the buttermilk. They were fabulous. Last step - just added the milk to the food processor before dumping everything onto the counter. Highly recommend to others. Guests were happy. :) Would be excellent for breakfast.
This is an unnecessarily complicated recipe for biscuits especially for the beginner. I can't stop laughing. I wanted to stop reading at parchment paper!!! Food processor!!! I suggest a new biscuit baker go get a bag of self-rising flour and follow the directions on the bag. You only need the self-rising flour, lard, shortening or butter and milk or buttermilk. Yes, you can substitute milk for the buttermilk, you'll need a little less. You want a nice soft dough that just holds together. There's no need to over complicate the simple.
Made these this morning for Thanksgiving breakfast. I followed the recipe exactly--so easy and delicious! I'll definitely make these again. Thank you!