Flaky Homemade Buttermilk Biscuits

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Can I just make a confession? Y’all before this week, I could not make a good biscuit. I mean I have been cooking since I was in second grade and have never managed to make a good biscuit. What in the world, right?

So a couple of weeks ago, my grandson, Peyton, told me “Gammy, you need to learn to make a biscuit like Bojangles”. Is that what are standards have come to – fast food? Well honestly Bojangles does make a great biscuit. So that is where the challenge I set for myself began. I decided I was going to try three different biscuit recipes in attempt to make a perfect biscuit. Well maybe not perfect but at least edible. Bless my heart.

I then posted this challenge on my social media and had so many people reach out with tips on making a good biscuit. Can I just say, Carolinians can make some awesome biscuits. Several people recommended grating the cold butter with a cheese grater and brushing the tops of the biscuits with buttermilk for a perfectly golden top. Also several people suggested refreezing the butter after grating. I took the advice of my fellow bakers and grated and refroze the butter. Another great tip I received was to keep your cutter floured and to not twist the cutter.

I another thing I learned, the most important thing that every cook emphasized – , NEVER, NEVER, NEVER overwork biscuit dough. Overworking and over-handling biscuit dough will result in tough, hard, and flat biscuits. Mix the ingredients together *just* until combined.

When planning this challenge, I ordered my biscuit cutter from Amazon. I actually went to three stores before ordering from Amazon and the cutters were out of stock at all three stores. I guess lots of folks in North Carolina are making biscuits. The cutters I ordered (which worked great by the way) were the RSVP Endurance Round Biscuit Cutters. This was a stainless steel set including four different size cutters and best of all they nest for easy storage.

The recipes suggested using a cast iron skillet. In full candor, I own a cast iron skillet but honestly I don’t use it often. I prefer using the enameled cast iron. Cast iron stresses me out. It takes years to season and then without fail someone in your family will use the skillet without cleaning it correctly and you have a rusty skillet. I know lots of cooks who love their cast iron skillets and my hat goes off to them. Actually I am jealous of them for doing such a great job with their cast iron. When baking my biscuits, I used the Lodge 3.6 Quart Enameled Casserole Dish.

Also I would like to share a couple of biscuit failures while making these biscuits. As some of you might know, I live with my daughters and change houses every two weeks (yes I know crazy). I thought I had done a really good job of stocking both houses with a good selection of kitchen gadgets. When I sold my house and moved to North Carolina, I found I had enough gadgets to stock two houses (okay I may have an obsession). I am at my daughter, Holly’s, house this week for this experiment. And what did I realize (in the middle of making biscuits)? I did not have a pastry cutter or a box grater (kitchen fail). In true home cook fashion, I emphasized. I used my Pampered Chef Salad Chopper (which I use to chop chicken, barbecue, and yes salads) and Pampered Chef Microplane Grater. (This is not a sponsored ad, I just have A LOT of Pampered Chef products).

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The three recipes I used were totally different in elements, ingredients and fats. For all three recipes I used White Lilly flour (which is a local favorite among so many bakers), Land of Lakes unsalted butter (if butter was in recipe) and whole fat buttermilk.

The photo below shows a comparison of all three biscuits.

The biscuit on the far left was baked with 2 cups self-rising flour, 1/4 cup of Crisco shortening, and 3/4 cup of butter milk (no butter, no baking powder or salt).

The biscuit on the far right was baked with all purpose flour, 8 tablespoons of butter, 2 1/2 cups of all purpose flour, 1 tablespoon of baking powder, 1 teaspoon of sugar, 1 teaspoon of salt, 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda, 2 tablespoons of shortening, and 1 1/2 cups of whole fat buttermilk.

The biscuit in the middle which was my revised version was baked with 3 cups of flour, 1 1/2 teaspoons of kosher salt, 2 tablespoons and 1 teaspoon of baking powder, 3/4 cup of unsalted butter (1 1/2 sticks), 1 large egg, 1 cup of buttermilk, and 2 tablespoons of ice water.

While researching biscuits, I learned they really do have a history. Early Southerners actually considered the biscuit a delicacy. The term biscuit was originally coined by the British which referred to their thin cookie and cracker like biscuit. Much different from what it evolved into once it got into the hands of southern cooks. In the pre Civil War south the biscuit was regarded as a delicacy and usually reserved for Sunday lunch. Or dinner.

The first biscuits were born out of necessity, they had to get things done quickly, do it simply, make your biscuit dough, and then pull and drop huge clumps of the buttery dough onto your baking sheet. The biscuit was sorta built to last all day in your lunch pail. You could put it in your overall pocket. It was not nice and layered and fluffy like biscuits now, because it had to be durable.

Also soft winter wheat flour was really hard to come by for southern biscuit makers. They had to rely on the port cities on Mobile, and New Orleans, to bring in this product. But when White Lily started making white winter wheat self rising flour in Knoxville, Tennessee in 1983, it was pretty much a game changer for biscuit makers.

Here in the south you know, southern cooks kind of kept their biscuits really close to home. It wasn’t until the good Colonel Sanders of Kentucky Fried Chicken fame took the biscuits out of the south in 1952 when he opened his first franchise, in Utah of all places. Thus bringing the southern biscuit nationwide. Who knew there was so much history behind the biscuit?

After making about 100 biscuits (or more), and after sharing biscuits with any neighbor who would eat them, I tweaked and revised the recipes to come up which I think is a pretty good biscuit which was confirmed by all my friends and neighbors.

One thing for sure, southern biscuits were and always will be a Southern delicacy. In the South, you can find them on any table for any meal of the day. Every time I use my antique rolling pin (which I purchased years ago at garage sale), I wonder the history the rolling pin holds. How many pies, biscuits and cookies did it make? What kind of memories does it hold and what kinds of things did it see along the way. How I wish the rolling pin could talk to me and tell me the stories it holds. Is that silly, probably. One of the reasons I really started my blog post is to carry on our grandmother’s recipes and what better way to do that than make a buttermilk biscuit.