Easy Sourdough Biscuits Recipe - Tender Homemade Biscuits! (2024)

FAQs

What are the two most important things to do to ensure a flaky and tender biscuit? ›

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.

Chill dry ingredients too

You already know that cold butter is the secret to flaky biscuits, but according to senior food stylist Josh Rink, making sure your other ingredients are cold, too, doesn't hurt.

With biscuits, however, the goal is to avoid this chewiness. So, by adding hard-boiled egg yolk to a biscuit recipe, you'll thwart the formation of gluten, thereby resulting in a buttery, flakey crumb that'll dissolve in your mouth.

Kneading too much and overhandling biscuit, shortcake and scone dough overdevelops the gluten in the flour, resulting in a chewy, tough baked product.

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.

White Lily brand flour, especially the self-rising flour, is the gold standard among Southern cooks who make biscuits on a regular basis. White lily, self rising. I use it for everything except those thing I make using either cake flour or yeast. If I'm using yeast I use King Arthur flours.

Either butter or shortening is fine; there's no clear advantage of one over the other (except that butter is easier to incorporate into the dough by hand, especially if you grate it like cheese).

What makes biscuits Southern? Besides being passed down by beloved grandmothers, Southern biscuits are typically made with flour made from soft red winter wheat, such as White Lily.

Pillai became known in India as the 'Biscuit King' or 'Biscuit Baron'. He took over Nabisco's other Asian subsidiaries. Pillai then established links with Boussois-Souchon-Neuvesel (BSN), the French food company, and by 1989 controlled six Asian companies worth over US$400 million.

If there isn't enough egg, your batter or dough may not be able to hold its structure or could end up overly dry or dense. On the other hand, if there is too much egg, your baked goods could lose their shape due to excess liquid, or have a rubbery (or even overly cakey) texture depending on the recipe.

Is egg used in bakery biscuits? ›

Biscuits and pastries

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.

In the presence of a liquid, the acidity of the cream of tartar activates the baking soda, causing it to start bubbling away, and that, in turn, is what makes the biscuits rise.

Soft biscuits can be hardened up by 10 minutes in an oven at 180C fan-forced (200C conventional).

Cover the dough loosely with a kitchen towel and allow it to rest for 30 minutes. Gently pat out the dough some more, so that the rectangle is roughly 10 inches by 6 inches. Cut dough into biscuits using a floured biscuit cutter (or even a glass, though its duller edge may result in slightly less tall biscuits).

Bake at 400° for 10-12 minutes or until golden and cooked through. Remove from pan and cool on wire racks. Store biscuits at room temperature for 1-2 days, or for best results, wrap in plastic wrap and freeze leftover biscuits in an airtight container for up to 3 months.

Its combination of two fats – butter and shortening. Shortening gives the crust structure, keeping those pretty crimps in shape and preventing the crust from sagging. And butter adds its signature flavor. Both fats contribute to flakiness.

Keep the dough ingredients cool

The key to standard pie crust is having pockets of fat surrounded by flour. But if that fat starts to melt and mixes with the flour, it can start to develop gluten, which can lead to a tough crust. To prevent this, keep everything as cold as possible.

Rubbing the fat in causes the baked product to have a flaky texture, as the dough is separated into layers. When fat is whisked with sugar, a process called creaming, the texture will be more like a cake, and be soft and springy. The type of fat used will also affect the colour of the product.