Description
This recipe comes from chats with friends and many weekend mornings of making biscuits. Pay close attention to technique — it is certainly as important as the ingredients — and you’ll surely make a moist, airy, tasty biscuit with good rise. Important: Use fresh, aluminum-free baking powder; this is less salty than regular baking powder and allows you to add more without affecting taste.
Ingredients
- 4 cups cake flour
- 2 ½ tablespoons aluminum-free baking powder
- 2 teaspoons salt
- ½ cup cold unsalted butter, cut into small chunks
- 1 ⅓ cups buttermilk, or more as needed
- 1 tablespoon salted butter, melted
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 500 degrees F (260 degrees C).
- Mix flour
- baking powder
- and salt together in the bowl of a stand mixer with a paddle attachment. Add unsalted butter and mix at medium speed until well incorporated and the mixture resembles wet sand
- about 4 minutes.
- Remove the bowl from the mixer and fold in buttermilk until dough sticks together.
- Dump dough onto a flour work surface; pat into a rectangle. Pat remaining dry crumbs into the mixture by hand.
- Cut dough in half with a floured bench knife; stack cut halves on top of each other. Press layers together to about 1 1/2-inch thickness
- shaping a long rectangle as you go. Repeat 3 to 5 times.
- Cut dough into 8 even squares with the bench knife. Cut off uneven edges and put these scraps to the side; clean cuts on all sides will encourage rise. Pat scraps together to make 1 odd-shaped ninth biscuit.
- Place biscuits close together in a 9-inch square pan and brush with melted salted butter. Place pan on top of the warm stove for 10 to 15 minutes to rise.
- Bake biscuits in the preheated oven
- checking halfway through bake time
- until tops are golden brown and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean
- 14 to 18 minutes.
Prep Time: 30 mins
Cook Time: 14 mins
Total Time: 54 mins
Servings: 9