Easy Biscuits Recipe - Food.com (2024)

FAQs

What is the basic biscuit formula? ›

The basic formula is as follows: 2 cups AP flour, 2 teaspoons baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon baking soda, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 6 tablespoons butter, 1/2 cup milk—and the add-in(s) of your choice. I'm giving you two savory options. The red is a sun-dried tomato and cheddar biscuit with paprika and a touch of cayenne.

Crisco may be beneficial for other baking applications, but for biscuit making, butter is the ultimate champion!

Selecting the liquid for your biscuits

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.

It's super simple and makes tall, fluffy biscuits ready for breakfast, sandwiches, and more! 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!).

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.

When you're making biscuits, you use buttermilk for its acidity as well as its fat and liquid content. The acidity is used, in conjunction with leaveners, to help the dough rise.

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.

The reason: The butter has not been incorporated evenly, leaving pockets of your cooked biscuits that are dry, dense, and filled with flour.

Here's the Reason Biscuits in the South Really Are Better

The not-so-secret ingredient they rely upon is soft wheat flour. Soft wheat thrives in temperate, moist climates like that of the mid-Atlantic, so cooks in those areas have had access to its special flour for a long time.

Instead of using yeast, they use baking soda or baking powder for leavening to give them a beautiful rise. If you love these homemade biscuits, then you won't want to miss our top-rated quick-bread recipes.

What type of butter is best for biscuits? ›

In general, with baking you want to use unsalted butter so that you can control the amount of salt in your final product. I tend to follow this rule, but I did notice that even the biscuit recipe that I liked the best only called for a small amount of salt.

If you're resting the dough in the fridge as some recipes instruct, you're multitasking by hydrating the dry ingredients and solidifying the fat. Because cold butter takes longer to melt than room temperature butter, chilled cookies will hold their shape in the oven.

Ruhlman's ratio couldn't be simpler — 3 parts flour, 1 part fat, 2 parts liquid, with a little salt and baking powder to add flavor and leavening, respectively.

The principal ingredients of biscuit dough are soft wheat flour, sugar, fat, and water. They are mixed with other minor ingredients (such as baking powder, skimmed milk, emulsifier, and sodium metabisulphite) to form dough containing a well- developed gluten network.

Turns out homemade biscuits are as easy as 1-2-3 and to make a basic biscuit recipe, that's all you have to remember: a biscuit ratio is 1 part fat, 2 parts liquid, 3 parts flour, by weight.