The Best Buttermilk Biscuits | Ultimate Biscuit Recipe (2024)

FAQs

What is the secret to an excellent biscuit? ›

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!). See our easy drop biscuits and cheese drop biscuits for even easier biscuits.

Crisco may be beneficial for other baking applications, but for biscuit making, butter is the ultimate champion!

There are many theories about why Southern biscuits are different (ahem, better) than other biscuits—richer buttermilk, more butter, better grandmothers—but the real difference is more fundamental. Southern biscuits are different because of the flour most Southerners use. My grandmother swore by White Lily flour.

For super light, crumbly biscuits try grating or pushing the yolks of hard-boiled eggs through a sieve into the biscuit dough. This increases the fat content and slows down the development of gluten. Cookie recipes on the other hand are more likely to contain eggs. Adding moisture as well as binding the mixture.

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!).

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Why do my buttermilk biscuits fall apart? ›

Fat and moisture are crucial components in biscuit texture

If your biscuits are turning out dry and crumbly, there are a few things worth checking to ensure a fail-proof baking process. The first issue could be the amount of fat you're using, or perhaps you're not using the right kind of fat.

A Biscuit (U.S.) Is a Scone (U.K.)

The closest British equivalent to those buttery miracles is a scone, which ain't too bad either. Both baked goodies use flour, fat, liquid and a leavening agent.

The process simply involves using a pastry brush to lightly coat the top of your unbaked biscuits with a liquid ingredient known to create that browning effect once heated. One of the most popular choices for this is cream, which imparts a rich golden color to the crust.

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.

Many biscuits and dinner rolls are brushed with milk or buttermilk for a finishing touch. Heavy Cream: For a little more shine than an all-milk wash, but not as much as an egg wash, use heavy cream or half-and-half.

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.

Embrace stacking. In biscuit-making, height and flakiness go hand in hand. Why? Because the layers of butter that get compressed and stacked as you build your biscuits are what create those flakey biscuit bits, and they also create steam in the oven — which helps the biscuits to expand as tall as possible.