Homemade Buttermilk Biscuits

Intro: Homemade Buttermilk Biscuits

This is a very easy recipe for rich buttermilk biscuits. They have a good old-fashioned flavor that will bring back memories of your mom's kitchen. They are fast and effortless to make.

STEP 1: What Do You Need?

The ingredients for this are:

2 cups of all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoons baking soda
2 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 cup shortening
3/4 cup buttermilk

With the buttermilk, you can easily make your own for a fairly cheap price. Just follow SFHandyman's Instructable on how to make butter. It turns out a good quality buttermilk. I found that a pint of heavy cream yielded exactly 3/4 cup buttermilk, but it could be different in your case, so be sure to measure it if you make your own.

And thanks to InvaderDig for providing a subtitute for the shortening, if you'd rather use real butter. Subtitute 1/2 cup + 1 tablespoon butter in place of the shortening.

STEP 2: Mix It Up!

This is the easiest part of it all. First, just stir all of the dry ingredients together. Then you cut in the shortening until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs. The best way of doing this is with a pastry cutter, or if you dont have one, a whisk works just as good. Finally, stir in the buttermilk until the mixture is just moistened. All mixed, the dough will be very sticky and gooey. We'll take care of that in the next step.

STEP 3: Rolling and Rolling....

Now you turn out the mixture onto a floured surface. Make sure there's plenty of flour on the surface, because you will need to work a bit into the dough. Now you'll start kneading the dough.

*NOTE*: make sure your hands are nice and floured! Otherwise, you'll end up with half of the dough stuck to your hands.

Work enough flour into the dough to make it un-sticky (is that a word?) and able to be worked with easily. However, make sure to not knead the dough too much, otherwise you'll end up with rocks.

Once it is kneaded and able to be worked with, roll the dough out to a thickness of between 3/8 and 1/2 inch thick. I found it just as easy to just pat the dough out with my hands as it would be to roll it out.

STEP 4: Baked

Now that the dough is rolled out, it's time to cut it into biscuits with a cookie or biscuit cutter. The most commonly used cutter is a 2.5 inch circular cutter. However, you can use whatever shape you please (I've even seen ones in the shape of a heart). What I used was a 1.5 - 2 inch scalloped cutter. Using this size yielded me about 22 biscuits. A 2.5 inch one will yield about 12 - 16, depending on how thick you decide to roll out the dough.

To bake the biscuits, preheat the oven to 450F. Grease a baking sheet/tray (I used a spray oil, such as Pam or Crisco) and bake for 8 - 10 minutes, or until they're a light golden brown. After baking, the bottoms of the biscuits should be a nice, deep golden brown color (they were on mine, at least. They may not end up that way every time).

STEP 5: Eat It Up!

Now is the time when you can enjoy these rich biscuits. They taste best when they are still warm (Let them cool on the sheet for a couple minutes, and they'll be the perfect temperature). I personally like them best plain with some butter, or with some jam. If you decided to make your own buttermilk at the beginning, that butter tastes very good on these!

Enjoy!

If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to ask!

Comments

[timweaver17]

i have a bread baking "bible" (book) and it instructs one to roll and fold the dough multiple times to give it more of a layered texture. have you ever tried that? thoughts?

[TechNerd1012]

No I have never thought of that. You can always try it! Might make it more of a flaky biscuit (ie can pull the different layers apart)

[timweaver17]

read somewhere else about not rolling it out and just flouring the outside of the sticky dough, apparently it helps trap the moisture inside? thoughts?

i might try it next weekend, if so i'll let you know how it goes

[TechNerd1012]

I dont know about it trapping moisture. However, it might turn out a bit differently if you just roughly press them into shape with your fingers than rolling them out.

[jotts]

These look good but being a veteran cathead biscuit maker I know...in order to make good biscuits they have to be touching on all sides, put into a pan that's just big enough to fit them all so they rise up not out and don't dry out

[coppeis]

Dear TechNerd1012,

Hello I am on my schools newspaper("Middleview"). I was wondering if I could use your awesome Instrucable for my "DIY and how to" section of the paper please respond if you want me to put this article in my schools paper(you will get credit for the article on the paper). Also the article may or may not be shortened for the paper.


Sincerly,

Coppeis
(P.S. I sent you a message with the same letter)

[jehan60188]

they look incredible!
you can make this simple recipe even easier by using a food processor

[InvaderDig]

Great recipe! I'm going to try these soon :)

Shortening substitute: butter (1 cup shortening = 1 cup + 2 tablespoons butter; butter is better tasting than shortening, and contains no trans fats. Trans fats pose a higher risk of heart disease than saturated fats, which were once believed to be the worst kind of fats.

[TechNerd1012]

Thanks for the comment and the butter substitute! I now need to try it with butter (always done it just with shortening before)!

[scoochmaroo]

Lovely! I've been wanting to do a biscuit I'ble for a while now, but haven't had a chance to. Well done!

[TechNerd1012]

Thank you!

[Computothought]

I have made biscuits, but not exactly the same formula. I will have to try out yours.