Homemade Biscuits - Learn to Cook - CopyKat Recipes (2024)

FAQs

What is the secret to good biscuits? ›

You already know that cold butter is the secret to flaky biscuits, but according to senior food stylist Josh Rink, making sure your other ingredients are cold, too, doesn't hurt.

So what's the final verdict? Butter is the winner here. The butter biscuits were moister with that wonderful butter taste and melt-in-your mouth texture. I'd be curious to test out substituting half or just two tablespoons of the butter with shortening to see if you get the best of both.

It will work with unsalted or salted butter. I like the extra saltiness of salted butter, but you can reduce the salt to 3/4 teaspoon if you prefer. Self-rising flour: If you use self-rising flour, there won't be enough baking powder added to the biscuit dough.

SouthernKitchen.com says, "Ask any Southern chef or sagacious biscuit grandma and you'll hear a pattern emerge: they all swear by White Lily flour."

White wheat in general is around 9-12% protein, while the hard reds are 11-15%. 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.

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.

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.

High-fat butter, such as Kerrygold Butter, is best. The rich fat from the butter releases water when the biscuits are baking which is what contributes to the beautiful layers and flakiness that we love about biscuits.

in this case, it appears that the biscuit structure is just a lot more stable (structurally speaking) when there's less butter. When you get a lot of butter, you're kind of filling your biscuit with holes, which makes it unable to bear its own weight to rise very far.

What butter do bakers use? ›

Unsalted butter is better suited to baked goods like cookies that are sensitive to salt content and rely on butter's creamy flavor profile, helping ensure that you don't end up with an overly-salty baked good.

Since the concept of squeeze spread isn't new, we found a way to make LAND O LAKES^® Soft Squeeze^™ butter spread stand out: It contains real butter.

The solution: Use half cake flour and half all-purpose flour. This combination will give you a biscuit with light and airy interior with a pleasant, satisfying bite on the outside. Also, sifting the flour and other dry ingredients will give you a smoother, airier dough.

The cornstarch lowers the protein of the flour, which produces a more tender biscuit. The heavy cream provides the fat that helps create the flaky layers in great biscuits.

Biscuits and gravy is a popular breakfast dish in the United States, especially in the South. The dish consists of soft dough biscuits covered in white gravy (sawmill gravy), made from the drippings of cooked pork sausage, flour, milk, and often (but not always) bits of sausage, bacon, ground beef, or other meat.

Use top-quality ingredients

Its medium protein level (11.7%) yields biscuits that are perfectly tender, yet still possess enough structure to rise up rather than flatten out or slump over as they bake. There are those who swear by Southern-style "soft" flours for their biscuits; think White Lily.

Make a batch of the basic biscuit dough, then chill until firm, roll out and cut out shapes as above. Bake on a non-stick baking tray for 10-12 minutes until pale golden. Carefully transfer to a wire rack to cool and crisp up.

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.

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.