No-Fear All Butter Biscuits Recipe

OK, brace yourself: All Butter Biscuits are not actually that hard to make. You can whip up a batch in about an hour and most of that time is completely hands off. 10 minutes of active work, 50 minutes of looking at things on the internet. All you’ll need is flour, butter (lots of butter), baking powder, sugar, salt, and milk.

Don’t fear the biscuit

I’m not sure why all this folk-lore has risen around the humble biscuit. It’s not something that came from Parisian kitchens, after all, they came from the homes of cooks who had been trained via tradition, not classical technique. There were no stand mixers, no food processors, and no refrigerators to help with the process until recently, and yet kitchens were filled with soft, buttery biscuits.

Ok, ok, ok… are these going to be those multi-layered, pull-apart-perfection biscuits? No. All of that magic happens in the mixing process, and it takes a bit more time and energy than we’re going to devote here.

But are they delicious? Yes. Are they totally worthy of jam? Yes. Gravy? Yes. Butter? Yes. Will they sit proudly beside a basket of fried chicken? YES THEY WLL.

All Butter Biscuit Secrets

Now, here are three secrets about making biscuits. Remember these, and you’ll be good to go.

Biscuit Secret #1

The secret with any biscuit and its rise is that you’ve got to be gentle with that dough. So gentle, in fact, that we’re not even going to haul the rolling pin out for these. We’re just going to pat the the dough into a rough circle and stamp out some biscuits.

If you want only the very tallest biscuits you won’t gather the dough scraps and have a second go. Now, this is a GREAT way to get a small number of tall, picture perfect biscuits, but it’s also an EXCEPTIONALLY GOOD way to waste food, and I’m willing to bet that no one’s grandmother was chucking scraps of anything in favor of magazine-worthy food on her table. So re-pat that dough and make peace with the fact that the 2nd (and 3rd) sets of biscuits just won’t rise as much.

(Look up at that photo again, the top biscuit on a couple of stacks are from the 3rd go at patting out the dough. See? They’re just not that tall. And while I’m tattling on myself, the stack just to the right of the main one wasn’t even in the original photo, I Photoshopped it in.)

Biscuit Secret #2

For the very softest biscuits you’ll want to use a low-protein flour. All-purpose is just too strong for the quality of crumb that we’re going for here. Pick up a bag of self-rising flour the next time you’re at the supermarket. Even though most of them don’t list their protein content they’re going to be hovering around 8% — similar to cake flour — which will give you the least amount of structure, and the softest possible biscuit.

FYI for anyone who happens to be reading outside of the States: American self-rising flour contains leavening agents AND SALT. So if you ever come across an American recipe for that calls for self-rising flour and doesn’t list salt in its ingredients you should add about 1/4 teaspoon of salt per cup of flour.

Biscuit Secret #3

Let them chill out. Literally. After you’ve stamped out the biscuits pop them into the fridge for 20 minutes, or the freezer for about 10. This is also a great time to pre-heat your oven.

Looking for something to put on top of all the super-buttery biscuits you’re about to make? How about some homemade jam? I really like my recipes, which you can find here (strawberry) and here (blueberry), but push comes to shove you can grab something from the supermarket, too.

What are your favorite food combinations that use biscuits? Biscuits and gravy? Friend chicken and biscuits? Let me know in the comment section, below!

Tag me Instagram @jamandbreadofficial (I love seeing when other people make one of my recipes!) and please consider leaving me a review below if you make my Multigrain Seeded Bread. I sincerely hope you love it, and that you are ON BOARD with making my Multigrain Seeded Bread a staple of your bread making routine. 

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Enjoy! 😀👍🏻

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