Buttermilk Biscuits

It’s easy as can be to make homemade Buttermilk Biscuits! Topped with jam or smothered with sausage gravy, freshly baked biscuits make any meal better.

Buttermilk Biscuits

Nothing says “comfort” quite like a basket of warm homemade buttermilk biscuits fresh from the oven. If you grew up in the south (or with relatives from the south), chances are good you ate many a buttermilk biscuit in your childhood. 

Unlike other homemade breads and buns, Buttermilk Biscuits require no advance prep time to knead or rise. They’re leavened with baking powder rather than yeast and take almost no time at all. 

My mouth waters just thinking about these biscuits! A golden browned lightly crispy top with a soft flaky interior, they’re especially delicious spread with butter. As the butter melts it gets into every crease and crevice of the biscuit.

Easy Biscuits

But I probably don’t need to tell you how good buttermilk biscuits taste, right? What you might not know is just how easy it is to make homemade biscuits! It hardly takes any more time than cracking open a tube of the refrigerator biscuit dough and the taste is out of this world. 

How to Make Biscuits

Usually a Buttermilk Biscuit recipe starts by cutting cold butter into flour (mixed with baking powder, baking soda and salt). A pastry cutter or the tips of your fingers are used to work the butter into the flour until it resembles a coarse meal. 

To be frank, I have never enjoyed the process of cutting in butter. That’s why I was intrigued years ago when I read about a different method over at Cooks Illustrated.

Biscuits Made With Melted Butter

Instead of cutting in the butter the traditional way, they melted their butter, then placed their buttermilk in the freezer for approximately ten minutes. Once that buttermilk is icy cold, the cooled, melted butter is poured into the buttermilk. Happy little chilled butter pieces form, then that butter is wonderfully distributed throughout the biscuit dough. 

That has become my go to method for making biscuits. It’s quick, it’s easy and it produces fantastic results. 

After the ingredients are combined, the dough is folded over over a couple of times, turn it out onto a floured surface. Folding the dough over onto itself helps create those delicious layers that are so beloved in biscuits. Care should be taken to not overwork the dough, but folding

Then the dough is rolled out, and a biscuit cutter or large round cookie cutter to cut out individual biscuits and place them on a baking tray.

Brush the tops with a little melted butter if you like before baking! 

Tips For Making Buttermilk Biscuits

While biscuits from scratch is quite simple, there are a few guidelines to keep in mind when handling the dough. 

• DO NOT OVERMIX! I can’t overstate how important it is to resist kneading or vigorously handling this biscuit dough. Too much handling will activate the proteins in the flour making the biscuits tough and dense. For fluffy flaky biscuits, keep mixing to a minimum.
• Measure your flour properly. This means spooning the flour into your measuring cup, not scooping with your measuring cup. Not sure what that means? Check out my all about flour post to make sure you measure correctly. Otherwise you’ll end up with too much flour, and dry biscuits. 
• Use a sharp biscuit cutter. I know some folks use glasses or jars to cut their biscuits but I find it just doesn’t work as well. A cutting mechanism with blunt edges results in flatter biscuits without that pretty dome shape on top. 
• Don’t twist your biscuit cutter. Resist the urge to twist your biscuit cutter when cutting your biscuits. Go press your cutter straight down. Twisting can seal the sides of your biscuits together, making you lose those lovely layers. 
• White Lily Flour. If you can get some White Lily Flour, it’s regarded as the top choice for biscuit making. That said, most of the time I just use any all-purpose flour I have on hand. 

Buttermilk Biscuits are best served fresh and hot from the oven! They will lose a bit of their fluffiness as they cool, so I highly recommend waiting to bake these until just before serving. 

What to Put on Biscuits

You can’t go wrong by spreading your biscuit with a pat of butter but there’s almost no limit to the number of spreads that are delicious on homemade biscuits. Try these with honey butter, strawberry jam, apple butter or just about any preserve you love. 

More Great Recipes

If you like these Easy Biscuits, here are a few more quick bread recipes you need to try! 

• • Ham and Cheese Biscuits
  • Jiffy Cornbread
  • Cheesy Garlic Rolls
  • Bisquick Strawberry Shortcake

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