Biscuits

robert_creth · December 14, 2018, 7:13pm

This is the recipe that I use:

Buttermilk Biscuits
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Buttermilk Biscuits

Homemade buttermilk biscuits are our favorite breakfast at the Cool Water Ranch. For years, we’ve made them almost every weekend. They’re so easy to make I wonder why more people don’t. When she was still very small, my daughter Mary Leigh started helping me. Now she’s completely taken over the job. The recipe is not revolutionary. There are only three ingredients: self-rising flour (White Lily is by far the best), buttermilk, and butter. (We used to use Crisco, but what we now know about trans-fats made me convert to butter as the shortening.)

Biscuit

3 cups self-rising flour
6 Tbs. butter, softened
1 1/2 cups buttermilk

Measure flour into a large bowl. Cut butter into the flour and stir with a wire whisk until mixture resembles coarse cornmeal. It’s okay for there to be a few small lumps.

Blend in the buttermilk with light strokes of a kitchen fork. Continue lightly blending until the dough leaves the side of the bowl. Add a little more milk if necessary to work all the dry flour at the bottom into a sticky, thoroughly damp dough.

Spoon out the dough with a large spoon into lumps about three inches high and three to four inches in diameter. Dip your fingers in water and mound the dough up a bit if necessary.

Bake 10 to 14 minutes in the preheated 475-degree oven. They’re ready when the little peaks on the biscuits begin to brown. Don’t look for a dark overall brown; that indicates overbaking.

Makes six to ten biscuits.

Will be trying this weekend. Thanx

Michae1_P0wers · December 14, 2018, 10:16pm

I’m hosting 30 friends for a dinner Christmas party “brunch” so I’ll try the trick mentioned here of freezing and grating the butter. Needing about 60 large biscuits amongst many other things, so should be a decent undertaking. Thanks for the advice.

Milton_Hudson · December 18, 2018, 4:42pm

Michael,
I make the biscuits and freeze them. They reheat beautifully. I used to make a batch every two weeks for the kids’ breakfast. (my kids have never eaten a cold cereal breakfast in their life) I would alternate between the cheese biscuits and the regular biscuits. The outside actually has a better texture when reheated. Unless you like a particularly doughy flabby biscuit. I find these disgustingly reminiscent of the fast food abominations and do not care for that style of biscuit, but it does have its fans i guess.

RichardFlack · December 18, 2018, 5:01pm

Another example of Britain and America being “two great countries divided by a common language” (GBS)
… those aren’t biscuits, they are scones!!

Brandon_R · December 18, 2018, 5:47pm

Richard, to who’s post are you referring? I can’t find anyone from GB…

T_Williams · December 28, 2018, 1:33am

In case anyone was wondering, I noticed and subsequently purchased a bag of White Lilly at Wegman’s in PA today. I’ll be making biscuits this Saturday to see just how much of a difference it makes.

TW

TimF · January 1, 2019, 3:20am

Anyone ever add hard cooked egg yolk to their biscuits?

I’m going to Alabama for work next week. I’m planning to pick up a bag of White Lilly while I’m there.

Jay_Miller · January 2, 2019, 3:40pm

Yes, that’s in one of the biscuit recipes from The Pie and Pastry Bible. I like the richness it adds but eventually decided it wasn’t worth the extra effort.

MattBerto · January 2, 2019, 4:17pm

I was never happy with my results, using various combinations of the Bittman and Lopez-Alt recipes. Got a distinct bump up in quality (most notably in flakiness/lightness) when I read this article and got my hands on some White Lily.

Steve_Gautier · January 2, 2019, 4:27pm

Concordville store?

MattBerto · January 2, 2019, 4:39pm

Thank me later (and yes, this is expensive on a delivered basis, consider buying one less bottle of wine this year and you’ll make up for it).

https://jet.com/search?term=white%20lily

T_Williams · January 11, 2019, 12:31am

Yes. It was on an aisle end cap between the baking aisle and the cereal.

Greg_Giere · January 11, 2019, 8:30pm

Awesome!! Just ordered two bags

Christine_Huang · January 14, 2019, 3:43pm

Fresh Market here in NY sells White Lily, so I always make sure to have a bag on hand. I also freeze and grate my butter. After trying many, many, many recipes and methods, my favorite may be blasphemous. It’s Stella Park’s recipe for Sweet Potato Biscuits made with buttermilk instead of milk. The sweet potato makes for a tender biscuit, while grating the frozen butter gives it the layers and loft.

I’ve adapted this recipe many times to make Scallion & Cheddar biscuits, Caramelized Onion & Gruyere, and so on. They’ve all been met with rave reviews. I also like the fact that I’m sneaking in a vegetable, so they’re “healthy”

Brandon_R · January 14, 2019, 5:29pm

These are Alton Brown’s Southern Biscuits: buttermilk-based with equal parts butter and shortening (I really need to find some lard). I cut up the fats and use my hands to “rub” the pieces into the dry ingredients to get those fluffy layers. I used regular old King Arthur unbleached all purpose flower. They were great.