Hockey pucks. That’s what my first attempt at biscuits turned into. Pillsbury Grands were the only biscuits I had ever made before opening my restaurant. While they are quick and easy, they don’t have much in common with homemade biscuits when they are made well. Fortunately, I had great supportive customers who accepted my less-than-perfect biscuits and supported me through the learning process. At least the biscuits were smothered in sausage gravy, making them slightly less offensive, but I wanted them to be great.
I substituted whole milk with some lemon juice for the real buttermilk in the recipe. It was far more cost-effective. I have tried several different substitutions for the buttermilk. The recipe is rather forgiving in this regard. Adding some Greek yogurt or sour cream to the milk-lemon juice mixture gives more of a real buttermilk consistency and can add some flavor. Most people cannot tell if you use real buttermilk or one of the mixture variations, so feel free to experiment or just use whatever you have on hand.
I continued to experiment and develop my recipe. I felt I had achieved a pretty good biscuit when several visitors from the south told me my biscuits reminded me of the biscuits their Mama or Grandma made—high praise. I’ll take it.
There is an art to biscuit making. Not overworking the dough, moving quickly, keeping the ingredients cold, and getting them into a hot oven. I developed a feel for it. I learned to feel when the dough had been folded just enough. It would spring back just right, telling me when to stop working the dough.
Several years after selling my restaurant, I can still make biscuits in my sleep. It’s a zen thing. A moving meditation I no longer get to practice every day, but one of my fondest memories. My quiet time in the morning before anyone else was there. Quietly and quickly making my biscuits in my tiny little kitchen.
The biscuits are best right out of the oven, but you can slice them and reheat them in a frying pan over medium-low heat.
Buttermilk Biscuit Recipe
Ingredients
- 750 grams of flour plus more for dusting and shaping
- 4 tablespoons baking powder
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 ½ teaspoons salt
- ½ lb. unsalted butter grated.
- 3 cups buttermilk
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 450 degrees.
- Combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a large mixing bowl.
- Grate butter into the flour mixture.
- Rub grated butter into dry ingredients using your fingertips until the mixture resembles crumbs.*
- Add chilled buttermilk to the mixture and stir until the dough comes together.
- The dough will be sticky.
- Turn dough onto a floured surface, dust top with flour, and gently flatten and then fold the dough over on itself 5 or 6 times. A bench scraper works great for this. If you don’t have one, use the side of a metal spatula.
- Flatten the dough one final time and cut it into 1-inch-thick rounds.
- Cut biscuits with a 2-inch cutter, pushing straight down through the dough.
- Place biscuits on a baking sheet so that they just almost touch.
- 24 biscuits will fit on a half-size sheet pan.
- Reform scrap dough, work it as little as possible, and continue cutting. Biscuits from the scraps might not rise as high as those from the first cutting.
- The whole process should be done quickly to keep the butter cold.**
- Bake until the biscuits are tall and light gold on top. I bake them for 11 minutes, then rotate the pan and bake for 4-6 minutes. Time may vary based on your oven.