Mmm, biscuits: Southern chefs spill the secret to perfect DIY biscuits (2024)
Need some consolation now that summer is almost over? September happens to be National Biscuit Month—the perfect excuse to bake up a buttery, fragrant, comforting batch (or two, or three). And you don't have to be Southern, or even a professional baker, to make the fluffiest, flakiest, tastiest biscuits this side of the Mississippi. Read on for indispensable tips from the masterminds behind two of Asheville, North Carolina's top biscuit makers,Biscuit Head andTupelo Honey—then use the recipe below to whip up a batch of the best biscuits you'll ever have.
"A good biscuit starts with good flour," says Jason Roy, owner of Biscuit Head. Like many Southern cooks, he uses self-rising flour because it's pre-mixed to include a blend of hard and soft wheat as well as a leavening ingredient for the perfect rise—something you can't get in plain all-purpose, cake, or pastry flour. (Want to really do as the Southerners do? Try White Lily self-rising flour, available nationwide at specialty supermarkets and online.)
Whether you use shortening, lard or butter as your fat of choice, "snap it in" like Brian Sonoskus, chef of Tupelo Honey Café, does. "Pinch the flour and fat together like you're snapping your fingers," he explains. This creates thin sheets of butter that create puff pastry-like layers in your biscuits.
For soft and fluffy biscuits, blend the liquid and dry ingredients just until the dough "resembles cottage cheese," Sonoskus says. This stops you from activating too much gluten in the flour and ending up with a tougher biscuit that doesn't rise as high. But even if you mix too much, don't worry. "Denser biscuits have their place—they're better for making sandwiches," he rationalizes.
Gently shape biscuits with an ice cream scoop instead of a biscuit cutter. That's what Roy does to make Biscuit Head's oversized cathead biscuits, so-called because they're as big as a cat's noggin. Whether you make them big or small, it's an incredibly easy and foolproof technique. Don't have a spring-loaded scoop? Use a measuring cup and a silicone spatula.
Use real buttermilk if you can get it. Both chefs pledge allegiance to Asheville-based Cruze Dairy's whole-milk buttermilk for its unsurpassed creaminess and acidity. Look for local farms in your area to get the good stuff, not the watery low-fat substitutions found at the supermarket.
Ready to try it yourself? Here's Tupelo Honey's much-sought-after recipe:
Tupelo Honey Buttermilk Biscuits
Makes 10 biscuits
2 cups White Lily self-rising flour
1 tablespoon sugar
½ teaspoon salt
⅓ cup chilled shortening, cut into pieces
½ cup heavy cream
1 cup buttermilk
Melted butter
Preheat the oven to 425°F and position the oven rack slightly below the center of the oven. Lightly butter a round cake pan or cast-iron skillet.
In a large mixing bowl, whisk the flour, sugar and salt. Snap the pieces of shortening with your fingers until the shortening pieces are no larger than peas. Make a well in the mixture and pour in the cream and ⅔ cup of the buttermilk. Using your hands or a rubber spatula, sweep in the flour and turn the dough until the dry ingredients are moistened and the dough resembles cottage cheese, adding enough of the remaining ⅓ cup buttermilk to reach this consistency.
Sprinkle the rolling surface with flour. Turn the dough out onto the surface and sprinkle the top with flour. With floured hands, fold the dough in half and pat the dough into a ⅓- to ½-inch-thick round, using additional flour as needed. Flour again if necessary and fold the dough in half a second time. If the dough is still clumpy, repeat the folding process for a third time. Pat the dough into a 1-inch-thick round. Dip a 2-inch biscuit cutter into the flour and cut out biscuits, ensuring you do not twist the cutter.
Place the biscuits in the pan, sides slightly touching. Brush the tops of the biscuits with melted butter and bake for 15 to 20 minutes, until light golden brown, rotating the pan 180°F after 6 minutes. Remove from the oven and brush the biscuits again with melted butter.
Reprinted with permission from Tupelo Honey Cafe: New Southern Flavors from the Blue Ridge Mountains by Elizabeth Sims with Chef Brian Sonoskus, Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2014.
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!).
Unlike plain flour, self-rising flour already comes pre-mixed with a fixed distribution of salt and a raising agent out of the box. Generally, self-rising flour also has a lower protein content, so it's often used in recipes that benefit from being lighter and more tender, like biscuits.
For flaky layers, use cold butter. When you cut in the butter, you have coarse crumbs of butter coated with flour. When the biscuit bakes, the butter will melt, releasing steam and creating pockets of air.
As it turns out, adding hard-boiled egg yolks to your biscuit dough is a way to ward off an overworked, tough dough that can be the downfall of a butter-based pastry. When the trick is employed, the pastry shatters and then dissolves in your mouth quickly, tasting like a knob of flaky butter.
Remember that baking soda is 3-4 times stronger than baking powder, so you'll need a lot more baking powder to get the same leavening action. As a general rule, triple the amount of baking powder for the amount of baking soda called for in a recipe. For example, 1 teaspoon baking soda = 3 teaspoons baking powder.
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.
While there are plenty of flour varieties to choose from, White Lily reigns above all else for Southern bakers and is the crème de la crème when it comes to the flour we use for any biscuit recipe.
When baking buttery treats like biscuits, the key is to bake them at a temperature where the water in the butter turns quickly to steam. This steam is a big part of how the biscuits achieve their height, as it evaporates up and out.
Flavor-wise, the Crisco biscuits seemed to be drier and had a pastier flavor profile compared to the butter biscuits. My team members and I also found that the biscuits made with Crisco produced the greatest height. However, other teams found that the biscuits made with butter produced the greatest height.
For an extra layer of safety, punch out your biscuits onto a baking sheet, then refrigerate the entire sheet for 10 to 15 minutes before transferring to the oven. By nature, biscuits are a quickbread, which benefit from as little gluten development as possible.
If you have time, prepare the biscuits up to the point they're on the pan before preheating your oven. Place the pan of biscuits in the refrigerator while you preheat your oven to 425°F, or for about 20 to 30 minutes. This short chill will help them maintain their shape while baking.
The biscuits take about 14 to 16 minutes of baking. You can rotate them after about 8 minutes to get a more even bake. Keep a close eye on them, they should be pale to golden brown in color. Remove from the oven and serve warm.
Now turn your dough 45º and repeat the same process of folding and flattening. Fold it 4-5 times, rotating after each turn. This is going to make those beautiful fluffy layers of buttery biscuit. You don't want to go any more than 5, though, or it could get really tough.
Increasing the amount of butter definitely makes the biscuit "taste" softer, more crumbly, and more flaky. I usually associate flakiness and softness with size; you expect a big biscuit to be fluffy and soft, and a biscuit that doesn't rise to be dense.
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!).
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.
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. In order to generate steam, the oven must be set at a minimum of 425 degrees for at least 10 minutes prior to baking.
Introduction: My name is Arielle Torp, I am a comfortable, kind, zealous, lovely, jolly, colorful, adventurous person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
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