Buttery biscuits with enough structure to make a biscuit sandwich but soft enough to melt in your mouth. Made with plenty of butter and buttermilk, these biscuits are decadent and delicious. Smother them in gravy or a smear of jam, any way you have them, they're an amazing breakfast or brunch item.
Course Breakfast
Cuisine American
Prep Time 20 minutesminutes
Cook Time 25 minutesminutes
Total Time 45 minutesminutes
Servings 163-inch biscuits
Ingredients
2.5Cbutter or 5 sticks
5Cflour
2Tb+ 2 tsp baking powder
1tspbaking soda
1Tbsugar
1Tbsalt
2Cbuttermilk
Instructions
Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Prepare a baking sheet by placing 1 Tb of butter on the pan and rubbing all over including on the sides with a paper towel. You can bake your biscuits in a cast iron pan for extra browning and crispness.
Mix dry ingredients well with a whisk to aerate in a large mixing bowl. Set aside.
The temperature of your butter is essential to the success of your biscuits. The butter should be cold straight from the fridge just before cutting. Cut butter into 4 pieces lengthwise and then dice into ¼ inch pieces.
Using a food processor or pastry cutter, cut butter into dry ingredients until the mix resembles pea-sized crumbles. If I'm making a half recipe, then I usually use a pastry blender, but for the full recipe, I use a food processor just to save a little time and keep the butter as cold as possible. Unless you have a huge food processor you'll likely have to work in batches. Don't stress too much about getting exactly half each time. Just eyeball half the dry and half the butter, pulse, toss into large mixing bowl and repeat.
Remove buttermilk from the fridge and add to butter mixture. Make sure your buttermilk is cold, straight from the fridge. First, stir with a strong rubber spatula or wooden spoon just until mixture comes together. Once the buttermilk is absorbed, ditch the utensils and bring the dough together with your hands in the bowl. Don't worry the dough will seem like a mess at first but as you work it, the heat of your hands will help bring it together.
Flour your work surface and place the dough on top. Start by bringing the dough together and then fold the dough onto itself once, press down with your hands, turn the dough 90 degrees, and fold onto itself one last time. This ensures you get all the flaky layers of your dreams.
Top the dough with additional flour and dust the rolling pin. Roll out to 1.5-inch thickness at a minimum. Do not roll the dough out any thinner than 1.5-inch or you won't get the fluffy biscuits you envisioned.
Cut biscuits with a 3-inch or 2-inch. A mason jar or cup works fine, but a sharper edge is preferred. When you cut the biscuits, cut straight down without turning the biscuit cutter to improve the rise of the biscuit.
Place biscuits on the prepared baking sheet and immediately bake for 20-25 minutes. You never want to set the biscuits aside for any length of time before baking as the magic of your leavening agents, baking powder and soda, will fade over time. Remove from the oven when golden brown all the way across the top.
Notes
Cleanup is made much easier with a bench scraper. If you roll out the dough on your countertop and try to clean it up with any type of damp cloth, you'll have an even bigger mess on your hands. A bench scraper can quickly clean all the stuck-on dough.