Southern Buttermilk Biscuits. In pursuit of the most perfect Southern…
By: Craig Wattrus
Tags: Southern Cooking, Biscuits, Recipe, Baking, Cooking

In pursuit of the most perfect Southern Biscuit.

I’ve spent over a year working on combining the collective knowledge of the internet on biscuits and my own experience exploring this simple and exceedingly simple combination of flour, buttermilk, and butter. For readers outside of the USA, biscuits in the USA are a heavenly combination of scones (simple savory cake-like texture) and croissants (butter and flaky layers).

Delicious, fresh, flaky buttermilk biscuits straight out of the oven.

Our goal is flaky biscuits which still have a slightly cake-like texture, a delicious flavor, and crispy top and bottom.

Let’s get to it.

Don’t skimp on anything in this recipe. If you’re looking for a quick, no-frills recipe, I’d suggest the base recipe from which I always work, written by Ann from Cooking Maniac. The steps I outline might take longer to start but will yield an excellent result, and remember you’ll get quicker the more times you make them.

Measure exactly. Baking requires accuracy. Approach this like you’re making a science experiment in the oven. Take care to measure exact amounts to get the best, consistent result each time. You will also pick up on adjustments you’ll need to make as you practice making these, sometimes the age of your flour, consistency of your local buttermilk and butter will affect the dough. Until you’re confident in this, stick to the exact measurements.

Ingredients

Try to get the best possible ingredients. If you’re putting the effort in to make something beautiful, use beautiful ingredients.

Dry ingredients

2.5 cups of flour (don’t use flour you’ve had in the cupboard for a while)

1 teaspoon salt & 1 teaspoon sugar

2 tablespoons baking powder

Wet ingredients

1 stick (113g) frozen butter (European style & cultured is best)

1 cup buttermilk

Step 1— Freeze the butter 🥶

Unless you’re really in a pinch, you want the butter as cold as possible. Freezing the butter is a key step in making the dough workable and increasing your chances of good, crispy, flaky layers with a twist of cake like texture.

I have made biscuits with only refrigerated butter, it’s possible to get a good result. If you’re in a fix and don’t have time to freeze the butter you’ll need to be really patient with processing the butter into the dry mix and will need to reduce the time you work on the dough.

Step 2— Set oven to 450f (232c) 🔥

I’ve tried many temperatures. You want the oven hotter than most recipes ask of you. This accelerates the speed at which the baking powder works, encouraging the layers and correct biscuit texture to form.

You will drop the temperature of the oven in the last 5 or so minutes of cooking.

Step 3— Combine the dry ingredients 🥣

Sift and combine the dry ingredients. It’s important to combine the flour, salt, sugar, and baking powder thoroughly as you cannot work with the dough once you’ve added the butter and buttermilk. There is no opportunity to work in an ingredient you neglected to apply in this stage.

Step 4 — Process the butter ✂️

The most time-consuming stage. Take the butter from the freezer and using a vegetable peeler or grater, process the butter into thin slices. Add small amounts of the sliced butter to the dry ingredients and give it a light toss as you go. If you add it all at once, you risk having wasted all the time making slices as the butter will inconveniently decide to clump together again.

Step 5 — Distribute the butter in the dry mix 🥣

Since you’ve been adding the butter bit by bit to the dry ingredients, you should only need to combine your dry ingredients + butter very minimally. Just make sure the butter is evenly distributed in the dry ingredients.

Step 6 — Add the buttermilk and combine 🥛

You do not want to mix or whisk at ANY point. Make a small well in the center of the dry ingredients + butter. Pour in the buttermilk. With a spatula, carefully and gingerly scoop the dry mix + butter into the buttermilk, keep this scooping action as you lightly bring together the ingredients. The goal is to create a mass of dough that is just combined sufficiently that it can be transferred to a floured surface.

I’ve found there's always a part of the dry ingredients at this point that is not combined, don’t fret, you will work it in when you start rolling in step 8.

The “dough” should look something like this at this stage. You can clearly see butter and it’s not combined.

Step 7 — Transfer to a floured surface

Lightly flour a surface that is big enough to enable rolling out the dough. Don’t use too much flour as you don’t want to dry out your dough. Err on the side of stickiness rather than dryness. Transfer the dough by tipping it and any remaining dry ingredients onto the surface.

Step 8 — Roll and fold the dough 🥐

You will be rolling and folding. The purpose here is two-fold, first, to combine the ingredients fully before baking and second (and most importantly) to create layers. The frozen butter in a layer of the dough will ensure it doesn’t fully combine with the folded layer above or below it creating a flake which you will so enjoy once it’s baked.

Aim for no more than 6 folds and rolls. Begin by rolling the dough “blob” out to around 3/4 inches (2cm) thickness. then fold from the side nearest you to the side furthermost from you. You want to alternate the sides you roll to ensure an even combination of the ingredients. Roll again to 3/4 inches (2cm) and fold. Do this 3 more times. Fold the dough once more, this time roll it out to 1 inch thick (2.5cm).

The dough will start out sticky and soft but by the 6th roll & fold it can be pretty tough. Try not over flour the roller/and dough, use just enough flour to not have trouble rolling or lifting up the dough from the counter.

This is how your dough will look after the first few rolls.

Step 9 — Cut and prep for baking 🔪

Have an oven pan ready. I’ve found that the best biscuits are made without a paper baking sheet that is recommended in most recipes. The ideal baking vessel for biscuits is a rectangular baking tin with sides. Put a good layer of flour on the bottom of the baking tin to make sure the biscuits don’t stick.

Prepare a biscuit cutter by rubbing a little flour along the inside and outside of a biscuit cutter. If you don’t have a biscuit cutter, I most often use a wine glass or thin-walled drinking glass (The cutter should be between 2.5inches and 2.8inches wide).

Cut the biscuits out of the dough one at a time, try to do this efficiently so you get the most biscuits from the slab of dough. You can combine and refold/roll the remaining dough but the quality biscuits will come from the first round of cuts.

Don’t try to smooth out the sides, pinch them, change their shape, etc.

You will clearly see layers as you cut through the dough.

After each biscuit is cut, place it in the baking tray and stack each consecutive biscuit right next to the last biscuit. You want them to all be touching as much of the surrounding biscuits as possible. Usually, I have 6 to 8 biscuits from a batch, make 2 rows of 3 or 4 biscuits.

This after bake photo shows the proximity of the biscuits.

Step 10 — Bake and check 👩‍🍳👨‍🍳

The speed the biscuits bake will be entirely reliant on your oven. I’ve never baked biscuits in less than 15 minutes but never more than 20mins. Place the biscuits in the oven and set a timer for 14 minutes.

At 14 minutes check on them. You want to see a golden brown color on the top and some of the sides. You will most likely see that some of the biscuits at this stage still have what looks like a bit of a doughy middle. Unless they look totally ready, lower the oven temp to 400f (205c) and bake for another 3–5 minutes. Keep an eye on them at this stage. Keep in mind the middle will still cook for a couple of minutes once you take it out as they will still be hot.

When the biscuits are done, they will look similar to this.

Step 11 — Optional: butter

A lot of recipes recommend brushing the freshly baked biscuits with melted butter as they come out. I have not found this to add much to the flavor or the presentation. I don’t do this step normally. However, it’s personal preference and so give it a try and see what you think.

Variations

Biscuits are an excellent, versatile, delicious snack or meal as they are, however, I’ve had some luck with adding some additional flavors.

Go wild with your choice of herbs or cheese. Keep in mind that you want the biscuits to be flaky even if you add other ingredients.

Chive and parmesan

One of my favorite variations. Add a sprinkling of both very finely chopped chives and finely grated parmesan between each fold during step 8.