Buttermilk Biscuits

Ingredients

• • 3 cups all-purpose flour

  • 2 tablespoons sugar

  • 4 teaspoons baking powder

  • 1 teaspoon salt

  • 1 teaspoon baking soda

  • 170 grams chilled unsalted butter, cut into 1/4-inch pieces

  • 1 cup buttermilk (or 2/3 cup yogurt mixed with 1/3 cup milk or plant-based milk)

  • 1 egg, beaten

To Prepare

• 1. Preheat oven to 425°F. 

  2. Whisk flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and baking soda in large bowl to blend.

  3. Cut chilled butter into dry ingredients and use a fork or food processor to flake the butter until the mixture resembles a coarse meal.

  4. Add buttermilk and stir until evenly moistened. 

  5. Roll dough out to a thickness of 1" and cut as directed in the tips below:

     1. Use a sharp edge to cut your biscuits into your desired shape, and cut straight down, then pull the edge straight up. Don't cut side-to-side or twist (if you're using a round biscuit cutter, for example). This ensures that the sides of your biscuits are clean and not smeared together. If they're smeared, they will resist rising.

     2. We use a large knife to cut the biscuits into squares (as opposed to using a biscuit cutter to press them into circles). We do this partly because of technique #1 - the sharp edge - but there's another reason: When you use a round cutter, you end up with a lot of edge scraps that must be re-rolled and re-cut. The more times you re-roll and re-cut, the more you develop gluten in the dough, and the less risen your biscuits will be. Cutting your biscuits into squares will allow you to maximize what you get out of each roll and cut. We try to do no more than a total of two.

  6. Brush the top of each biscuit with the beaten egg wash.

  7. Bake until biscuits are golden brown on top, about 15 minutes. Use the tips below to help maximize your rise:

     1. Bake on a lower rack (slightly below the middle). Heat helps biscuits rise, and they rise from the bottom up, so you want your biscuits to be hotter on the bottom. If the tops bake too quickly, the rising process will be halted prematurely, and you'll end up with dense biscuits.

     2. If you have a convection oven, turn off the fan. The fan helps air in the oven heat evenly throughout, and that's not what you want for biscuits. You want the oven cooler in the middle so that the biscuits have more time to rise before being fully baked.