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Yesterday, while I was making my corn chowder for dinner, I decided to make some buttermilk biscuits from scratch. Let me tell you, these biscuits were phenomenal. They looked like 72 layer biscuits when they came out of the oven. I used Martha Stewart’s Baking Handbook recipe. The process wasn’t too bad, although maybe a little scary for first time biscuit bakers. Have no fear. There are a few tips to keep in mind when making these treats - start with very cold ingredients (cut your butter into chunks before you start and put back in the fridge until you need it), don’t worry if the dough looks sticky (biscuit dough is notoriously sticky), don’t cut the butter into the flour too fine (you want to see the butter), don’t handle the dough too much (the temperature of your hands will cause the butter to melt and the dough will be tough). Have fun, don’t worry and remember nothing ventured, nothing gained.
Take two sticks of butter and cut into cubes, place back in the fridge until you need them.
Cut butter into flour mixture. (This mixture consists of 4 cups all purpose flour, 1 Tbs. plus 1 tsp. baking powder, 1 tsp. baking soda, 1 tsp. salt, and 1 tsp. sugar - whisked together in large bowl) Use either a pastry blender or two forks to cut the butter.
Your mixture should resemble this when the butter is cut in. You can see that it resembles course crumbs with a few larger clumps remaining.
Pour in buttermilk (1 3/4 cups); using a rubber spatula, fold buttermilk into the dough. Mix until the dough just comes together. The dough will be sticky; don’t overmix.
Roll out the dough onto a lightly floured surface. With floured fingers, pat out the dough into a 1 inch thick round. Use a 2 1/4 inch round biscuit cutter to cut out the biscuits. (You can see I used a heart shaped cutter, use whatever kind you like) Place the biscuits about 1 1/2 inches apart on unlined baking sheets. Brush the tops with extra buttermilk. Bake, rotate the sheets halfway through. The biscuits should be golden and flecked with brown spots. This should take 18-20 minutes. Transfer to rack to cool.
Here’s a look at the finished product. You can see how much these biscuits rose and how flaky the insides were from the front biscuit. Delicious! Great in the morning with jam!