The Best Buttermilk Biscuits

If you’re looking for the best buttermilk biscuits, then you have the right recipe! The inside of these biscuits is pillowy, soft, and fluffy. The top crust is perfectly golden brown with a bit of a crisp texture. And a special folding process makes all the difference in the flakiness of these biscuits!

Ready for the best buttermilk biscuit recipe?

A good biscuit should be in everyone’s recipe box, whether physical or mental. And why is that? Because biscuits are versatile! For breakfast, have one with butter and strawberry jam. For lunch, make a sandwich with cold cuts. For dinner, serve these as a side with a good soup.

I always make these at Thanksgiving. The ingredients are simple, but the technique is important. Instead of cutting in the butter or using a food processor, the butter is grated like cheese and then frozen. Once frozen, it’s tossed with the dry ingredients. Once mixed with buttermilk, you have a biscuit dough.

During the rolling out, the dough is cut into thirds twice and stacked to create more flaky layers. These really are flaky, buttery, perfect biscuits!

Everything you’ll need to make this recipe.

The best part of these buttermilk biscuits is how few ingredients are necessary. Only six items come together to form these flaky, delicious morsels. Here are some of the important ingredients:

• Baking powder gives you a double action. It reacts once when it’s exposed to moisture. In this case, the buttermilk. It reacts for a second time when it’s exposed to the oven’s heat, giving extra rise and fluff.
• Baking soda adds some additional leavening and helps provide a nice brown color to the biscuits.
• Butter is where the flavor is and gives all the layers. Use good quality butter for the most flavor.
• Buttermilk has an acidity that will help the biscuits rise and give them a fluffy texture.

Here’s how to make this recipe.

While biscuits may sound like a long, arduous process, it’s actually quite simple. A few short steps result in the flakiest, best buttermilk biscuits. Here are the steps to make this recipe:

1. Combine the dry ingredients. In a large bowl, add the all-purpose flour, salt, baking powder, and baking soda. Using hands, mix everything together until roughly combined.
2. Grate the butter. Using a grater, grate the butter into small pieces. Once grated, place the butter in the freezer to firm up again.

3. Mix in the butter and buttermilk. To the dry ingredients, add the grated butter. Using hands, toss together the butter with the dry ingredients until all of the butter pieces are coated. Once tossed, pour the buttermilk over the top. Using a fork or a pastry cutter, mix the buttermilk into the butter and flour. The dough will look shaggy at first, which is how it should appear.

4. Roll out the dough. On a well-floured surface, place the dough. Pat it together to form a disc of dough. Using a rolling pin, roll the dough out into a rectangle, roughly 10 inches by 8 inches. Then cut the dough into thirds and stack them on top of each other. Roll them out into a rectangle, roughly the same size as before. Repeat this process one more time so that the dough has been stacked on itself twice. Roll the dough out to an approximately ¾-inch thick rectangle.

5. Cut out the biscuits. Using a biscuit or cookie cutter, cut out the biscuits and place them on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Once the first round of biscuits has been cut, push together the remaining dough scraps and roll them out to the same ¾-inch thickness. Cut out any additional two biscuits, resulting in eight total biscuits. At this point, do not push the scraps but simply discard or bake them up separately.

6. Brush the biscuits. Melt butter on the stove and let it cool slightly. Brush the butter onto the top of each unbaked biscuit. Then sprinkle each biscuit with a pinch of kosher salt or flaky sea salt.

7. Bake the biscuits. Place the biscuits in the preheated 450°F oven and bake for 14 to 16 minutes. Once baked, remove them from the oven and brush with any remaining melted butter.

These pro tips will make this recipe a success.

• Instead of using a food processor to chop up the butter, use a grater. A food processor can add heat to the butter, causing it to melt slightly, which is not desirable when making biscuits. Additionally, a food processor can make the pieces of butter too small. In contrast, a grater prevents heat from being added to the butter and allows you to control the size of the pieces of butter.
• The old adage is incredibly true: make it cold and bake it hot. This is incredibly important when making these biscuits and is something to continually keep in mind. The biscuits will turn out best if they are placed in the oven when the dough is cold.
• This recipe is specifically written with an amount listed for all-purpose flour to be sprinkled on your surface. Since this dough must be patted together and rolled out, an additional amount of flour is necessary. Taking this into account is important, and rather than stating an unknown amount of flour to spread on your board, use the amount indicated.
• When cutting out the biscuits, do not twist the biscuit cutter. Simply place the cutter where desired and press straight down, pulling it back up to release the biscuit. If you twist, you’ll seal in the edges, which will not make for a well-risen biscuit.

Make sure to try these other recipes with dough.

• No-fail dilly bread
• Honey oat dinner rolls
• Homemade stromboli
• Orange and cherry Irish soda bread
• The best homestyle honey oat bread
• Butterhorns
• Hearty grain bread
• Herb cheese biscuits
• Homemade pizza dough

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