Mile High Biscuits

Buttery, tender biscuits with lots of layers can be enjoyed any time of day and with just about any meal. They’re fast, easy and can be made with ingredients most people have on hand.

Growing up, I spent a lot of time watching Julia Child with my mom. Even as a kid, I was pretty much fascinated by her. I think the reason I liked her so much is because she seemed so at ease with herself in the kitchen, and yet at the same time, she made so many damn mistakes! But it never mattered to her! She’d just shrug her shoulders and make some comment about how to fix the error and how no one would ever be the wiser. I really feel like she gave me the courage to start baking when I was a kid. If SHE could screw up on tv and not seem to care, then maybe I could tackle that brownie mix after all.

One of things I hears Julia refer to was “having a good biscuit hand.” In a nutshell, this meant knowing just how much to handle dough and knowing exactly when to STOP handling it so the final product wouldn’t be overworked and tough. “Biscuit hand” is pretty critical when handling any kind of short dough, like pie crusts or scones or (duh) biscuits. It’s any kind of dough where you don’t want gluten to form, which would cause the end product to be tough and chewy. No one wants a tough, chewy biscuit…blech…

The keys to good biscuits are in the working in of the butter, the light kneading and the folding, folding and more folding of your dough. Similar to making a puff pastry, the more you fold a biscuit dough, the more layers you’ll get.

You’ll want to use what’s called a “letter fold” for these. Basically, you’ll be folding the dough over on itself as you would fold a piece of paper to fit in an envelope. Fold it, rotate it a quarter turn to the right, pat it out and fold it again and voila, layers of dough.

The more you fold and shape the dough, the more layers you’ll get. And those layers are going to puff up in the oven and become the most spectacular, golden, buttery, yummy biscuits. Enjoy!

Mile High Biscuits

5 from 1 vote

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Prep Time 10 minutes mins

Cook Time 20 minutes mins

Servings 8

Ingredients

  

• 2 cups flour
• ½ cup cold, unsalted butter sliced into ¼” slices
• 1 cup buttermilk or clabbered milk
• 1 Tablespoon baking powder
• 1 Tablespoon sugar
• ½ teaspoon salt

Instructions

 

• Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and set aside.
• In a large mixing bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, sugar and salt.
• Using fingertips, two forks or a pastry cutter, rub/cut butter into dough until you have the texture of wet sand. It’s OK to have some larger pieces of butter that have not totally been mixed in…these will add to the flakiness of the biscuits. You’ll know the dough is ready when you can grab a clump of it in your fist and it will mostly hold together.
• Pour in the buttermilk (or use clabbered milk, which is milk that has a tablespoon of lemon juice or vinegar added per cup of milk) and mix in gently, using a rubber spatula. The dough will be VERY sticky.
• Pour dough onto a well-floured counter (I usually add about ¼ cup of flour to my counter) and gently knead until it comes together into a shaggy, slightly sticky dough. Give the dough one letter fold. (This is accomplished by folding the top third of the dough down to the middle and then folding the bottom third over the top of that.) Rotate the dough a quarter turn to the right, add any additional flour if needed to the counter and repeat the folding process. This is what forms the layers of the biscuits. Repeat this process five or six times before patting out and cutting.
• Use a 2 to 2 ½” biscuit cutter or the rim of a drinking glass, cut biscuits by pressing straight down through the dough. Transfer to baking sheet, spacing about 2” apart. Re-roll any scraps of dough to cut remaining biscuits.
• Bake at 425 degrees for 17-20 minutes. Serve hot with lots of butter!!!