Best quick biscuit recipe (2024)

FAQs

What is the secret to an excellent biscuit? ›

Use Cold Butter for Biscuits

When the biscuit bakes, the butter will melt, releasing steam and creating pockets of air. This makes the biscuits airy and flaky on the inside. We default to our Land O Lakes® Salted Butter when baking biscuits.

The basic formula is as follows: 2 cups AP flour, 2 teaspoons baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon baking soda, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 6 tablespoons butter, 1/2 cup milk—and the add-in(s) of your choice. I'm giving you two savory options. The red is a sun-dried tomato and cheddar biscuit with paprika and a touch of cayenne.

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.

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

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.

But if you chill your pan of biscuits in the fridge before baking, not only will the gluten relax (yielding more tender biscuits), the butter will harden up. And the longer it takes the butter to melt as the biscuits bake, the more chance they have to rise high and maintain their shape. So, chill... and chill.

Another big variable in biscuit recipes is the amount of fat (butter, shortening, etc.) that the recipe calls for. Usually its in the ballpark of 1/3 or 1/2 cup per 2 cups of flour, which is about half the amount of fat per flour that you put into a pie crust.

A very hot oven is also key to good biscuits. My oven tends to run hot, so I put the temperature at 425°F, but if your oven is cool, you can go up to 450°F.

Buttermilk adds a nice tang to the biscuit flavor and helps them rise better.

What is the tastiest biscuit? ›

Mason Dixie Biscuit Co.

And the flavors were more from-scratch as well. According to Josh Rink in the Test Kitchen, “This brand feels like it uses real ingredients like a homemade biscuit.” And Josh is right: Flour, buttermilk, butter, milk, sugar, baking powder and salt are the only ingredients Mason Dixie Biscuit Co.

Sugar and Salt: Add flavor. We don't add a lot of sugar (just 1 tablespoon). Cold Butter: I love using European-style salted butter, like Kerrygold or Plugra, since they make our biscuits tender and delicious. If you don't have European salted butter, plain butter works (salted or unsalted).

Keep the oven hot.

When baking buttery treats like biscuits, the key is to bake them at a temperature where the water in the butter turns quickly to steam. This steam is a big part of how the biscuits achieve their height, as it evaporates up and out.

High-fat butter, such as Kerrygold Butter, is best. The rich fat from the butter releases water when the biscuits are baking which is what contributes to the beautiful layers and flakiness that we love about biscuits.

Cutting butter into flour or other dry ingredients is an essential part of preparing pastry dough, biscuits and crumbly pie toppings because it gives a light and flaky texture that can't be replicated with any other technique.

Use flour with low protein content

To make extra tender biscuits, you don't want to develop a lot of gluten. Flours with a higher protein content develop gluten more readily. To get the soft biscuits you're after, Catherine recommends using for an all-purpose flour with a small amount of protein.

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.

As it turns out, adding hard-boiled egg yolks to your biscuit dough is a way to ward off an overworked, tough dough that can be the downfall of a butter-based pastry. When the trick is employed, the pastry shatters and then dissolves in your mouth quickly, tasting like a knob of flaky butter.