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My Easy Buttermilk Biscuits recipe is reliable for consistent tender, light, fluffy, and golden brown biscuits.
If you love biscuits but struggle to make them from scratch, then this buttermilk biscuit recipe is for you! These biscuits are ready in just 20 minutes.
I take biscuits very seriously, and I’m about to share a very easy recipe that you can keep in your family for generations with your unique twist and additions.
One of my fondest food memories is my dad whipping up homemade biscuits from scratch and serving them buttered with sugar cane syrup.
As of today, every time I make this recipe for buttermilk biscuits when I eat them with sugar cane syrup, it takes me right back to being a three-year-old kid dangling his feet from the chair in biscuit bliss.
Biscuits are my favorite bread because they’re super diverse; you can make red velvet biscuits, garlic chive cheddar biscuits, or apple cinnamon biscuits.
If you are looking for an easy buttermilk biscuit recipe, you have come to the right place! This recipe only requires seven ingredients, and you possibly already have six in your home right now.
Table of Contents
What are Buttermilk Biscuits?
Biscuits are a quick bread that consists of all-purpose flour, milk, baking powder, baking soda, sugar, salt, and butter. They are often served during breakfast or on the side for dinner. Biscuits can be sweet or savory and may be prepared in various ways.
Biscuit is a French word for any dry, sweet, or savory flat cake. The phrase likely originated for twice-baked cakes (bis=twice and cuit=cooked).
Biscuits are very close to their cousin scones, but scones contain eggs which makes them richer than biscuits. The theory is that the British brought scones with them to America but could not find all the ingredients needed for a scone and substituted some ingredients to create a biscuit.
Key Ingredients
Here are the main ingredients you need to whip up a batch of homemade buttermilk biscuits.
Flour
I only use quality flour when it comes to my biscuits. The softest grain I know on the market is White Lily, but I like to measure out all of my ingredients, so I use King Arthur’s unbleached flour.
Baking Powder and Baking Soda
Most homemade biscuit recipes only call for baking powder, but I was always taught to use both to get the height and texture to my biscuit.
Sugar
A little bit of sugar goes a long way to making these biscuits special.
Butter
I only use cold unsalted butter in my recipe. Melted butter won’t give your biscuits the height that a great biscuit has—more on that in the pro tips and tricks section.
Buttermilk
The only way I know how to make a biscuit is with buttermilk. Bulgarian buttermilk is the best!
How to Make Easy Buttermilk Biscuits Recipe
Let me show you how to make the best buttermilk biscuits ever!
Step 1: Preheat oven to 450°F. In a large bowl, combine all your dry ingredients flour, baking powder, sugar, baking soda, and salt.
Step 2: Add your butter; if you’re doing this by hand, toss the butter in flour, then press between your thumbs and fingers to crumble the butter. Once the butter is fully incorporated, it should look like coarse cornmeal.
Step 3: Stir in cold buttermilk until dough forms. Then pour onto a lightly floured surface, knead (fold the dough on top of itself) 5 times. Press down to ¼ – ½ inch (right past the point on your finger). Cut with a floured 2 ½ inch biscuit cutter.
Step 4: The closer you place your biscuits to each other, the taller they’ll rise. Place biscuits on a foiled lined baking sheet (parchment paper is best for things baked at 400°F) and bake for 15 minutes until golden brown. Serve immediately.
Pro Recipe Tips & Tricks
Here are some things to remember when making your homemade buttermilk biscuits.
- You can use gluten-free flour as a swap for all-purpose flour. The gluten-free flour I find that works just like flour is Bob’s Red Mill gluten 1 to 1 baking flour. It doesn’t have any aftertaste.
- You can use regular milk as a swap for buttermilk.
- I don’t recommend using fresh lemon juice or white vinegar to make a faux-buttermilk substitute. The chemical reaction and flavor profile do not come anywhere close to buttermilk.
- If you use self-rising flour, omit the baking soda, baking powder, and salt from the recipe.
- If you use salted butter, omit the salt from the recipe.
- You can use a pastry cutter to blend the butter into the flour quickly.
- If you don’t have biscuit cutters, use a glass or cut the biscuits with a knife into even portions.
- Cold butter helps make fluffy biscuits. Melted butter in buttermilk biscuits saves time but produces an inferior biscuit.
- Try adding 1/2 teaspoon of black pepper for a more savory biscuit; perfect for dinner time.
- Try baking your biscuits in a cast iron skillet.
FAQs
Here are the top questions readers have about making an incredible batch of buttermilk biscuits.
Your biscuits can become dry and tough from overmixing the dough, and this is why I only recommend kneading your dough 5 times.
In college, my friends and I conducted an experiment where we utilized the same biscuit recipe but kneaded the dough 5, 10, and 20 times to see if it would make a difference. While there wasn’t much difference between 10 and 20 times kneading the dough, only 5 yielded a fluffier, taller, tastier biscuit.
Adding buttermilk to your biscuit dough is vital if you want softer, more delectable biscuits. The acidic nature of the buttermilk works in unison with baking soda and powder to produce a fluffier outcome.
The best flour to use for making biscuits is all-purpose flour. However, you can also use gluten-free flour if you need a gluten-free option.
To make sure that your biscuits rise, you need to do the following:
*Make sure you’re not using old baking powder.
*Use cold milk and cold butter.
*Don’t overmix the dough.
*Don’t flatten the dough less than ¼ inch.
*Bake your biscuits in a hot oven. Nothing less than 425°F
All of these play a major role in getting your biscuits to rise.
This is a personal choice. I only use butter in my biscuits. Using cold butter adds more flavor and will create steam as the biscuit bakes, causing it to rise.
Although shortening produces a tender biscuit, it may make your biscuits more crumbly which will cause them to fall apart.
The only reason your biscuits may fall apart is the fat used. Shortening will produce a tender and flaky biscuit that will crumble soon as you cut or bite into it. However, the opposite happens when you use butter.
Biscuits are best 3 days after baking but will be fresh for 7 days in an airtight container in the fridge. Keep leftover biscuits in a freezer bag for 3 months.
Slice biscuits in half before reheating in a 350°F oven for 5-7 minutes or until hot.
More Biscuit Recipes
Here are some biscuit recipes that will be amazing.
- Buttermilk Biscuits and White Sausage Gravy
- Big Easy Chicken Sandwich
- New Orleans Spicy Chicken Pasta
- Instant Pot Red Beans and Rice
- Crawfish Etouffee
Latest Recipe Video:
Before You Begin
Before getting started, here are the steps I use to get organized.
Step 1: Preheat your oven.
Step 2: Get all ingredients for the buttermilk biscuits on the counter.
Step 3: Measure everything out into individual bowls.
Step 4: Start following the recipe and prepare the best homemade buttermilk biscuits you’ve ever enjoyed.
I hope you enjoy these biscuits as much as my family and I do. When you make them, please leave a comment and star rating below. And if you have any questions about the recipe, I’d love to hear from you!
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Easy Buttermilk Biscuits
Ingredients
- 2 ¼ cup unbleached all-purpose flour
- 1 tablespoon baking powder
- 1 tablespoon granulated sugar
- ½ teaspoon baking soda
- ½ teaspoon kosher salt
- 1 stick cold unsalted butter cut into tablespoons
- 1 cup buttermilk cold
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 450°F. In a large bowl, combine flour, baking powder, sugar, baking soda and salt. Crumble butter into flour and with your hands until it resembles coarse cornmeal. Make a hole in the middle, then pour in buttermilk.
- Mix until a dough has formed, pour on a lightly floured work surface, knead 5 times, and flatten with your hands to ¼ inch (right past the point on your finger). Cut with floured 2 ½ inch biscuit cutter.
- Add to a foiled lined baking sheet and bake for 15 minutes until golden brown. Serve immediately.
Notes
Here are some things to remember when making your homemade buttermilk biscuits.
- You can use gluten-free flour as a swap for all-purpose flour. The gluten-free flour I find that works just like flour is Bob’s Red Mill gluten 1 to 1 baking flour. It doesn’t have any aftertaste.
- You can use regular milk as a swap for buttermilk.
- I don’t recommend using fresh lemon juice or white vinegar to make a faux-buttermilk substitute. The chemical reaction and flavor profile do not come anywhere close to buttermilk.
- If you use self-rising flour, omit the baking soda, baking powder, and salt from the recipe.
- If you use salted butter, omit the salt from the recipe.
You can use a pastry cutter to blend the butter into the flour quickly. - If you don’t have biscuit cutters, use a glass or cut the biscuits with a knife into even portions.
- Cold butter helps make fluffy biscuits. Melted butter in buttermilk biscuits saves time but produces an inferior biscuit.
- Try adding 1/2 teaspoon of black pepper for a more savory biscuit; perfect for dinner time.
- Try baking your biscuits in a cast iron skillet.
Biscuits are best 3 days after baking but will be fresh for 7 days in an airtight container in the fridge. Keep biscuits in a freezer storage bag for 3 months. Slice biscuits in half before reheating in a 350°F oven for 5-7 minutes or until hot.
Hi Kenneth
I made these delicious biscuits this past Sunday, they turned out great! You have blessed me with a recipe that worked, weekend breakfast just leveled up!!!! Keep those great recipes coming👍🏽
Thank you
Tawana, that’s music to my ears! Can you please leave me a star rating?