The Secret to Impossibly Fluffy Southern-Style Biscuits (2024)

FAQs

What is the secret to an excellent biscuit? ›

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!).

The best Southern-style biscuits are both tender AND flaky, using a combination of techniques and ingredients like buttermilk. Buttermilk is commonly used in Southern-style biscuits for its tangy flavor, plus buttermilk helps biscuits rise when paired with baking soda.

The key to making great biscuits is to use cold butter. We dice up the butter and then refrigerate it until ready to use. Cold butter will produce the fluffiest layers in your biscuits. Do not over-mix – once liquids touch the flour, mix just until dry ingredients are moistened.

The butter version rises the highest — look at those flaky layers! The shortening biscuit is slightly shorter and a bit drier, too. Butter contains a bit of water, which helps create steam and gives baked goods a boost.

Eggs act as a binder for biscuits, without them the mixture will be far too crumbly. They also add flavour and texture, as well as extending shelf life. Whole eggs are used to glaze baked goods including biscuits and pastries as they contribute colour and shine during baking.

By baking at a high temperature it helps your homemade biscuits to rise up quickly in the oven. You want a hot oven that will ensure your homemade biscuits bake up tall and don't fall flat.

*Substitute buttermilk, light cream, or heavy cream for the whole milk, if you prefer; use enough of whatever liquid you choose to bring the dough together readily, without you having to work it too much. The higher-fat liquid you use, the more tender and richer-tasting your biscuits will be.

While there are plenty of flour varieties to choose from, White Lily reigns above all else for Southern bakers and is the crème de la crème when it comes to the flour we use for any biscuit recipe.

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.

Is buttermilk or heavy cream better for biscuits? ›

Heavy Cream.

The heavy cream adds flavor to the biscuit by adding a little more fat and helps hydrate the dough. The extra fat in the heavy cream is helpful because buttermilk in stores is often “low-fat” buttermilk.

When you cut in your fat, you leave it in small pea-sized lumps. Those lumps get coated in flour and melt during baking into layers. If your fats are too warm, the lumps will melt and form a hom*ogeneous dough, resulting in dense, leaden biscuits.

When you get a lot of butter, you're kind of filling your biscuit with holes, which makes it unable to bear its own weight to rise very far.

The result: Tough, dense biscuits. Over-handling the dough can additionally over-develop the gluten protein in the flour, yielding a tough and chewy bite. As a general rule, handle the mixed dough as little as you can in order to roll, layer, or shape it.

Cold butter is ideal for baked goods that should be crisp — it also helps create those beautiful, flaky layers.

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!).

Buttermilk gives biscuits their signature tang and keeps the dough tender. Make sure it's very cold when you add the buttermilk to the dough.

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.