There's nothing like a homemade biscuit

I don't know why, but I have trouble making biscuits.  They always come out too heavy.  I know you're not supposed to overmix the dough. The baking powder has to be relatively fresh. The butter should be cold. And the best biscuits are made with buttermilk. So if I know all this, why do I have trouble? Beats me!

On Sunday morning I wanted a biscuit. A real, southern biscuit. That I would happily eat with a fried egg.

I decided to try a biscuit recipe that is in Elli's cookbook "Kids Baking" by Williams-Sonoma.  I figured if they have a biscuit recipe for kids - surely I could bake them correctly. And guess what? SUCCESS!!!!!!! They were flakey, buttery - oh, so delicious.  Ahhh.  I can cross that one off my list and move on to something else.

Here's the super simple recipe:

Buttermilk Biscuits 

makes 6 large biscuits

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

Mix:

2 cups all-purpose flour

3 T sugar

1 T baking powder

3/4 t. salt

Cut in 6 T very cold butter until the mixture looks like coarse crumbs.

Add 1 cup buttermilk.  Stir until just combined.  About 5 stirs.  That's it.

Flour your work surface. Dump the dough on to it and gently press together.

Cut into rounds with a 3" biscuit cutter. Gather scraps to cut final biscuits. 

The key is handling the dough as little as possible.

Bake for 15-18 minutes.

(I always bake all my cookies, biscuits, etc. on a Silpat baking sheet.) 

I hope you enjoy these biscuits as much as we did. 

Enjoy!