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Home » Bread » Quick Bread » Homemade Biscuits

Homemade Biscuits

November 27, 2019 by Victor @ Taste of Artisan 12 Comments

These homemade biscuits are exceptionally good. So good, that to me they are perfect biscuits. They are light, very flaky, buttery soft and have a slightly crunchy crust to contrast the airy interior. Normally, I wouldn't eat a biscuit on its own. I am not even a big fan of biscuits. This one, however, I would eat for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Try it with your morning tea or coffee, you will be surprised. Better yet, make some chicken and biscuits with them.

Close up of flaky, buttery soft biscuit cut in half.

These biscuits are exceptionally flaky and fluffy. That's one of the things that makes them so good, and so different from many other biscuits. My secret is to partially freeze butter, then shred it on a coarse grater. This gives these homemade biscuits their supreme flakiness that can't be achieved by hand cutting butter, or by using a food processor.

Those long, thin shreds of butter do magic to a biscuit's interior. In order to preserve these magic shreds, I mix the dough only using a spatula, never by hand.

Close up of golden brown biscuits.

Another trick is to bake biscuits with convection. This creates a thin, crunchy crust that contrasts the buttery soft, croissant-like crumb. Convection also helps achieve rich golden brown color, making these biscuits look every bit as good as they taste.

But don't fret, you can achieve a very similar result in a regular oven by bumping the temperature up by 25 degrees. The baking is done at a fairly high temperature of 450F. This allows the butter the puff up the biscuits and creates a perfect crust in a very short time.

Similar to baking bread,  I preheat the oven to 500F, then lower it once I put the biscuits in the oven.  This serves two purposes: it allows you to compensate for heat loss when you load biscuits in the oven and ensures a perfect 'oven spring'. Oven spring is the initial rise of dough before the crust forms.

Biscuits in a big bowl.

Tips

  • The single most important rule is to use very cold butter and milk.  Using cold ingredients ensures that the butter stays in bits and pieces, which creates weak points in the dough that flake off when you take a bite.
  • Work quickly to keep the dough cold, use a utensil to touch the dough instead of your hands, and don’t overwork the
    dough. Overworking develops gluten and makes biscuits tough.
  • Folding and rolling out the dough 4 times, as described in the recipe, is similar to lamination used to make croissants.
    The technique is known as blitz and the dough as blitz puff pastry. It creates many thin layers of dough and butter, causing the biscuits to puff up and achieve maximum flakiness.
  • The oven must be hot in order for biscuits to properly puff up, so preheating to 500F is very important. If you only preheat to 450F, the temperature will drop upon loading biscuits in the oven, resulting in poor puffing up (oven spring).
  • Chilling the biscuits before baking will relax the gluten and minimize the amount of butter that may run out of
    the biscuits as they bake. Both contribute to proper puffing up.

Making ahead

These biscuits are best when made, chilled for about 30 minutes and baked. However, if your schedule does not permit that, you can make them ahead and bake at a later time.

  • These biscuits can be made, cut, wrapped and frozen for up to a month. You can wrap the entire tray, or individually. Remove biscuits from the freezer at least 3 hours before baking to thaw. If they don't thaw properly, they won't rise well in the oven.
  • Wrapped biscuits can also be refrigerated for up to 3 days. Remove them from the fridge about 30 minutes before baking. This will ensure even rising.
  • You can also pre-bake these biscuits, cool thoroughly, then freeze wrapped in the pan, or individually. Bake them about 5 minutes less than normal, until just lightly brown. Then to finish baking, bake frozen in an oven preheated to 450F for about 10-12 minutes, until golden brown. After baking, let them rest for 5 minutes before serving, to let the heat evenly distribute inside the biscuit.
Golden brown biscuits.

Homemade Biscuits

4.84 from 6 votes
Print Pin Rate
Course: Appetizer, Breakfast, dinner
Cuisine: American
Keyword: biscuits, homemade biscuits
Prep Time: 30 minutes
Cook Time: 16 minutes
Overall additional time: 40 minutes
Servings: 12 biscuits
Calories: 259kcal
Author: Victor

Ingredients

  • 400 g all-purpose flour about 3 1/4 cups
  • 8 g kosher salt 1 heaping tsp
  • 20 g granulated sugar about 2 Tbsp
  • 24 g baking powder about 2 Tbsp
  • 140 unsalted butter about 10 Tbsp
  • 230 g whole milk 1 cup
  • 100 g grated cheddar cheese about 2 cups

Instructions

  • Twenty minutes before starting, place the butter in the freezer.
  • In a large bowl, combine the flour, salt, sugar, and baking powder. Grate partially frozen butter over the flour mix, using a cheese grater.
    Grating butter over flour mix.
  • Mix well using a fork.
    Mixing grated butter with the flour mix.
  • Pour in the milk and mix the ingredients together using a spatula.
    Mixing batter for biscuits with a spatula.
  • Add the mix-ins, if any, and mix together.
    Mixing in grated cheddar cheese into biscuit batter.
  • Turn the dough onto a generously floured work surface, dust the top with flour, and press into a rectangle about 3/4” thick, incorporating any loose pieces. Use a metal scraper to lift the dough and add more flour underneath. Now, using a rolling pin, roll the dough out into a 1/2" thick rectangle. Fold like you would an envelope, dust with more flour, and roll out to ½” thick. Rotate 90 degrees and repeat folding and rolling out. Then rotate 90 degrees and repeat folding and rolling out two more times, making it a total of 4 times folding and rolling out.
  • Cut out biscuits using a 3” round cookie cutter. Gather the cut-offs, roll them out again and cut more biscuits. Repeat until all dough is used.
    Biscuits dough rolled out and cut into circles.
  • Place the biscuits on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper, spacing out at least ½’, and let rest for 20 to 30 minutes. Ideally, place them in a refrigerator or a very cool room.
  • Twenty minutes before baking, preheat to 500F.
  • Whisk the egg yolk with one teaspoon of milk in a small bowl. Brush the tops of biscuits with the egg wash.
    Brushing biscuit tops with egg wash.
  • Transfer the biscuits to the oven, lower the temperature to 450F, or 425F if using convection (preferred).
  • Bake for 8 minutes, rotate the baking pan and bake for additional 6-8 minutes, or until the biscuits have risen about 1.5 times, and the tops and the bottoms of the biscuits are rich golden brown.
    Golden brown, puffed up biscuits on a baking sheet.
  • Remove the biscuits from the oven, transfer to a cooling rack and let cool for 3 minutes before serving.

Nutrition

Calories: 259kcal | Carbohydrates: 29g | Protein: 6g | Fat: 13g | Saturated Fat: 8g | Cholesterol: 36mg | Sodium: 322mg | Potassium: 271mg | Fiber: 1g | Sugar: 3g | Vitamin A: 406IU | Calcium: 176mg | Iron: 2mg

 

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  1. Tom

    November 06, 2022 at 7:00 pm

    These were pretty good - flaky and tall - but a little too much baking powder flavor for me. I will cut it down by 1/4 to 1/3 next time and see how that impacts the overall flavor and texture.

    Reply
    • Victor @ Taste of Artisan

      November 09, 2022 at 3:40 pm

      Tom, a small percentage of people are more sensitive to aluminum than others. If lowering the amount of BP doesn't help, perhaps you can try aluminum-free BP. Don't know how it will work, though as I've never tested it.

      Reply
      • Tom

        January 31, 2023 at 2:33 am

        Good to know, thanks Victor. I'm trying the recipe again tonight with slightly less BP (regular not alum free).

        Have you figured out how to use this recipe with goat cheese or feta - a cheese that is better in chunks but will blend into the dough when you do the folding passes? Trying tonight with feta and added it at last fold. Will see how it works.

      • Victor @ Taste of Artisan

        January 31, 2023 at 6:58 pm

        Yeah, I would gently fold it in at the end to keep preserve chunkiness, I think it will work fine. Let me know how they turn out. Good luck!

  2. Baby Kato

    April 01, 2022 at 1:31 pm

    Awesome biscuits; we really enjoyed them. They were terrific; light, flaky and delicious. Thank you for sharing this lovely recipe.

    Reply
    • Victor @ Taste of Artisan

      April 02, 2022 at 4:02 pm

      You are very welcome. Enjoy!

      Reply
  3. Sandy

    July 30, 2021 at 5:34 pm

    I've been searching for a good biscuit recipe for a while now, and I made these biscuits along with chicken and gravy last night and they were incredible! They are soft, flaky, and delicate. Thank you so much for such a great recipe!

    Reply
    • Victor @ Taste of Artisan

      July 30, 2021 at 10:41 pm

      You are very welcome, Sandy. Enjoy!

      Reply
  4. Gill

    March 07, 2020 at 5:30 pm

    I made these biscuits today following your recipe and they turned out really well. The flakiness was very impressive. Great tip on shredding pre-frozen butter, it worked like a charm. I will be making more of these for sure. Thanks for sharing!

    Reply
    • Victor @ Taste of Artisan

      March 07, 2020 at 5:57 pm

      You are very welcome, Gill. Happy baking!

      Reply
  5. Mel

    December 01, 2019 at 11:03 am

    Grating partially frozen butter? What a great idea! I don't have a food processor so this technique will come very handy for me. Your biscuits look amazing. I am definitely going to try making them.

    Reply
    • Victor @ Taste of Artisan

      December 01, 2019 at 6:24 pm

      Enjoy!

      Reply

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