Buttermilk Biscuits

Build the Meal Around Buttermilk Biscuits

• Sausage gravy
• Honey and butter
• Fried chicken

How to Cook Buttermilk Biscuits

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1. Heat the oven to 220°C / 430°F fan. Whisk the flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, salt and sugar.

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2. Add the cold cubed butter and rub it in quickly with your fingertips, or pulse in a processor, leaving pieces the size of a pea. Visible butter is the point.

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3. Pour in the buttermilk and stir with a fork just until a shaggy dough forms. It will look under-mixed. Leave it that way.

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4. Tip onto a floured surface and pat into a rough 2 cm rectangle.

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5. Fold it in three like a letter, pat out again, and repeat three more times. Do not knead.

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6. Pat the dough to 2.5 cm thick and cut rounds with a 6 cm cutter, pressing straight down without twisting. Push the offcuts together gently and cut the rest.

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7. Set the biscuits on a tray so their sides touch — they help each other climb.

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8. Bake 14 to 16 minutes until risen and golden. Brush with the melted butter as they come out.

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A Few Notes

Cold butter, cold buttermilk, warm oven. Any warm butter and you get scones, not biscuits.

Never twist the cutter. Twisting seals the edge and the biscuit rises lopsided.

Sides touching on the tray gives you height; spaced apart gives you spread.

Common Substitutions & Variations

• Out of buttermilk? The usual stand-in is a tablespoon of lemon juice or vinegar stirred into 250 ml of ordinary milk and left five minutes; it is thinner than cultured buttermilk, so a batter may need a little less of it.

Keeping What's Left

Best within hours. Freeze unbaked cut rounds and bake from frozen, adding 3 minutes.

What's in a Serving

Per serving, calculated from the ingredient list with USDA FoodData Central figures (SR Legacy). A calculation, not a laboratory analysis: brands, cuts and how you measure change the real numbers. How the figures are worked out.