Homemade Biscuits
These buttery, flakey biscuits are easy to whip up and go great with any toppings, as the base of a breakfast sandwich, or as the side to your next Sunday night dinner.
Prep Time: 1 hour
Cooking Time: 15 minutes
Total Time: 1 hour 15 minutes
Yield: 6 biscuits
Ingredients
2 cups all-purpose flour, spooned and leveled
1 1/2 teaspoons granulated sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon fine seal salt
1 stick of very cold unsalted butter
3/4 cup cold buttermilk
Instructions
About 20 minutes before you want to start baking, put a stick of butter in the wrapper in the freezer. While the butter is chilling, in a large mixing bowl, whisk together dry ingredients (flour, sugar, baking powder, salt).
Take the butter out and using a cheese grater, grate the majority of the stick of butter into the dry ingredient mixture, leave about 1 tablespoon of the butter un-grated and set aside.
Using your hands, press the butter and dry ingredients into each other until little clumps start to form, then add buttermilk. Using a spatula, fold the milk into the mixture until the dough just starts to come together.
Dump the dough onto a lightly floured counter surface and use your hands to continue pressing the dough together until a ball starts to form. Pat the dough into a rectangular shape about 1 inch thick, then laminate the dough 2-3 times. Lamination is the process of folding the dough over itself in 3rds; take the two outside 3rds and fold them into the center. Rotate the rectangle and repeat this process from the other end. This allows layers of butter to form and helps with those flaky biscuit layers. Once the lamination process is complete, pat the dough into a uniform rectangle shape about 1-inch thick.
Flour a 3 - inch biscuit cutter and cut out biscuits, refolding and forming the dough back into a 1-inch disk with the scraps to use up all of the dough. Prepare your baking dish; I use either a cast iron skillet or 8x8 baking dish lined with parchment paper. You can also prep your dish with a super light layer of butter to prevent sticking. Place the biscuits in the pan so they’re just touching each other. If you’d like, brush a layer of melted butter over the top of the biscuits. Place the pan in the fridge for about 20-30 minutes to re-chill the dough.
While the biscuits are chilling, pre-heat the oven to 425 °F. Once the dough has chilled for at least 20 minutes, bake the biscuits for 9 minutes at 425 °F, then bake for another 3 minutes at 450 °F to help get the tops golden brown.
Cool the biscuits for 10 minutes then enjoy!
Tips & Tricks
Grating the butter is a quick way to break the cold butter up and incorporate into the flour
Don’t skip the lamination phase - this gives the biscuits their light, flakey layers
Nutrition Facts (per 1 biscuit serving)
Estimates. Will vary based on ingredients and serving size
Calories: ~300 kcal
Protein: ~5 g
Total Fat: ~5 g
Carbohydrates: 34 g