Buttermilk Biscuits

Ah, the fluffy, flaky, delicious-with-butter-and-honey (or sausage and gravy), American buttermilk biscuit. Buttermilk biscuits are not the same biscuits as in the UK and Australia, which distinguish small butter cookies as "biscuits," and big, chunky chocolate chip cookies as "cookies." In America, they're all cookies.

To us, a biscuit means one thing and one thing only: A hot roll that borders on scone territory, tangy with buttermilk, savory with lots of butter, light, fluffy, airy, flaky, and tender. They can be eaten with butter and honey or jam, or sometimes a honey butter or maple butter compound. Some people like to use them for crispy chicken sandwiches (oh god I'm drooling) or for biscuits and gravy, in which biscuits are topped with a peppery white sausage gravy (more drool). Whatever you decide to do with your biscuits, first you're going to need to start with a plain, perfect biscuit. And that's where I come in to help!

For decent biscuits, yeah, you could just use plain all-purpose flour. But you don't want decent, you want perfection! And for that, you're going to have to use a mix of cake flour and plain flour. Why cake flour? The cake flour will give your biscuits a light, airy tenderness that simply can't be achieved with using only dense, glutenous all-purpose flour. The regular flour helps with the integrity of the dough, but the cake flour balances things out so you don't end up with tough biscuits.

Another crucial step to achieving perfect biscuits (as well as pie crusts) is to keep all of your ingredients COLD. Cold as ice. You're willing to sacrifice our love! Sorry, Foreigner moment. Yes, cold, as in your flour goes in the freezer. And when you cut your butter into small cubes, stick it back in the fridge for a few minutes to counteract the exposure to room-temperature air. Taking these extra steps means that when the heat of the oven hits the chunks of butter in your cold dough, little pockets of steam will puff up and create the perfect flaky layers that define a good biscuit (or pie crust). If you allow your ingredients to get warm, your biscuits will not get fluffy layers, and you will cry. This is the same reason why the cold biscuits go directly into a very hot oven and not just a warm oven - we don't want the dough to sit around warming up, it has to hit the heat and bake up right away.

If you're outside the US and want to try these, check out my post about converting US cooking measurements.

Now that you know the what, why and how, let's get started on hands-down, THE BEST buttermilk biscuits!Yay!

Ingredients:

1 1/4 cup cake flour
3/4 cup all-purpose flour, plus extra for rolling and cutting
1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup butter, cut into small chunks
1 cup buttermilk


Preheat oven to 500F or 260C. Prepare your ingredients for chilling. In a medium-large bowl, whisk together your dry ingredients: cake flour, all-purpose flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Put this dry mixture into the freezer to chill. Next, cut the butter into small chunks, then put the chunks in a small bowl and return to the fridge. Finally, measure out 1 cup of buttermilk and refrigerate that, too.

Your ingredients should all chill for at least 15 minutes. Meanwhile, go listen to Foreigner, then sprinkle flour on a work surface and have extra flour nearby for your hands, rolling pin (optional but handy), and biscuit cutter (optional but pretty). If you don't have a biscuit cutter, you can cut your biscuits into squares using a knife.

Now, make the dough! Remove your flour mixture from the freezer and add the cold butter chunks to it. Using your fingertips, quickly crumble the butter into the flour, rubbing the butter and flour between your fingers, until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs with pea-sized bits of butter. This method is the fastest, and the way I prefer to do it, but a pastry cutter also works. If you use your fingers like I do, be sure to do it quickly so the heat of your fingertips doesn't soften the butter too much. I have never had a problem using this method and the ingredients stay pretty cold. Next, pour in the buttermilk and stir lightly with a large spoon until the dough comes together in a ball.

Now it's time to knead the dough and cut the biscuits. Dump the dough out onto a floured work surface. With floured hands, lightly knead dough, folding just a few times until it barely comes together. The less kneading the better, as too much kneading will warm up your dough (bad!) and make it tough and chewy (double bad!). Knead the dough just enough to get it all together and happy, maybe 4 or 5 turns total. If you see little bits of butter, THAT'S AWESOME! Visible bits of butter = steam = layers = flaky = mmmmm = you get an A+.

Next, pat out your dough into a circle, or use a rolling pin to get it around 3/4 inch to 1 inch thick. Resist the temptation to roll the dough too thin! They will rise and puff up to some extent, but you still want to start with biscuits on the thick side so they puff up tall and can be split open. Dip your biscuit cutter into flour to prevent sticking, and cut biscuits without twisting the cutter. I use a scalloped biscuit cutter for pretty edges, but any biscuit cutter is fine. Press your cutter straight down and then wiggle it to get the rest of the dough off the cutter. You can also use a floured table knife to cut the biscuits into squares if you don't have a biscuit cutter. Just be sure to cut downward with short sawing motions so that you're not pulling and tearing at the dough.

(Square biscuits - they taste the same.)

Place the biscuits on an ungreased cookie sheet. After you've cut as many biscuits as you can, loosely form the leftover dough scraps together, barely kneading or pressing them into another flat circle, and cut more biscuits. Remember to keep dipping your cutter into more flour. This second set of biscuits might not look as pretty, but if you don't knead it too much they should still come out tender and tasty. Once you've formed all of your biscuits, you can brush the tops with melted butter or milk, if you feel like it. This step is optional, as it's more for looks than taste.

Now it's time to bake! Place the baking sheet in the middle of the oven and bake for 8-10 minutes until they start getting golden brown edges here and there. They might still look a little pale, but they will have golden brown bottoms and they will done. Pinky swear. Remove the biscuits from the oven, transfer them to a serving plate, serve warm with butter and honey (or whatever floats your particular boat) and enjoy!

Makes 10-14 biscuits.

Need to use up the rest of your buttermilk? Head over to my recipe for chicken and dumplings or give my chocolate buttermilk pie a try!