Best quick biscuit recipe (2024)

FAQs

What is the secret to a good biscuit? ›

It's super simple and makes tall, fluffy biscuits ready for breakfast, sandwiches, and more! The secret to the best biscuits is using very cold butter and baking powder. We've made a lot of biscuits, but this easy biscuits recipe is the one we turn to the most (they are so fluffy!).

Crisco may be beneficial for other baking applications, but for biscuit making, butter is the ultimate champion!

Use good butter and dairy

Because biscuit recipes call for so few ingredients, it's important that every one is high quality—you'll really taste the difference. Catherine recommends splurging a bit on a grass-fed butter or European-style butter (now's the time to reach for Kerrygold!).

Selecting the liquid for your biscuits

Just as important as the fat is the liquid used to make your biscuits. Our Buttermilk Biscuit recipe offers the choice of using milk or buttermilk. Buttermilk is known for making biscuits tender and adding a zippy tang, so we used that for this test.

When you're making biscuits, you use buttermilk for its acidity as well as its fat and liquid content. The acidity is used, in conjunction with leaveners, to help the dough rise.

White wheat in general is around 9-12% protein, while the hard reds are 11-15%. As far as brands of flour, White Lily “all-purpose” flour has been my go-to for biscuit making. It's a soft red winter wheat, and the low protein and low gluten content keep biscuits from becoming too dense.

The reason: The butter has not been incorporated evenly, leaving pockets of your cooked biscuits that are dry, dense, and filled with flour.

If you're resting the dough in the fridge as some recipes instruct, you're multitasking by hydrating the dry ingredients and solidifying the fat. Because cold butter takes longer to melt than room temperature butter, chilled cookies will hold their shape in the oven.

What's the difference between a Southern style biscuit and a buttermilk biscuit? ›

There are many theories about why Southern biscuits are different (ahem, better) than other biscuits—richer buttermilk, more butter, better grandmothers—but the real difference is more fundamental. Southern biscuits are different because of the flour most Southerners use. My grandmother swore by White Lily flour.

Bisquick went on sale in 1931 as a ready-to-bake biscuit mix and was, and still is, extremely popular. The product has been updated since its launch, adding buttermilk and more shortening, to create a fluffier and lighter texture.

When it's time to whip up a batch of biscuits or scones, don't worry if you are out of Bisquick. Most pancake mixes are very similar to Bisquick and contain flour, leavening, salt and hydrogenated oil. Pancake mixes may contain slightly more sugar, though, resulting in a sweeter final product.

In general, a rolled biscuit of desirable quality has a golden brown, smooth and crisp crust without brown specks, and a tender and flaky crumb; it is expected to be symmetrical in shape with a high height, flat top and straight side (Learning and Food Resource of Oregon State University, 2012, see web references).

The two keys to success in making the best biscuits are handling the dough as little as possible as well as using very cold solid fat (butter, shortening, or lard) and cold liquid. When the biscuits hit the oven, the cold liquid will start to evaporate creating steam which will help our biscuits get very tall.

While biscuits receive some leavening power from chemical sources — baking powder and baking soda — the difference between serviceable and greatness comes from the extra rise that steam provides.

Cut off uneven edges and put these scraps to the side; clean cuts on all sides will encourage rise. Pat scraps together to make 1 odd-shaped ninth biscuit. Place biscuits close together in a 9-inch square pan and brush with melted salted butter. Place pan on top of the warm stove for 10 to 15 minutes to rise.