Homemade Biscuits - Learn to Cook - CopyKat Recipes (2024)

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by Stephanie Manley, Last Updated 8 Comments

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When you are first learning how to cook, homemade biscuits may seem difficult. I promise they aren’t difficult.

This is learning how to not over mix your ingredients so you get soft fluffy biscuits. This recipe is part of my learn to cook series, where I am cooking every recipe out of my old home economics cookbook.

Homemade Biscuits - Learn to Cook - CopyKat Recipes (1)

A biscuit is a type of “quick bread”. Quick bread is any bread that you can make without using yeast. Other types of quick breads are muffins, banana bread, biscuits, and popovers.

Since this recipe was for junior high students, you know this is an easy homemade biscuit recipe.

They are made with flour, baking powder, salt, shortening (or butter) and milk. Sometimes people add just a little bit of sugar to the biscuits as well.

The perfect biscuit should have a golden brown top and bottom. The inside should be soft and fluffy.

To make a good biscuit you need to measure your ingredients carefully and do not overwork the dough. This is a bread that is best made without a mixer. Often when we bake we use a mixer, but not here. If you over mix the dough they will become tough and hard.

The basic steps of preparing a biscuit are to measure your dry and your wet ingredients. You will sift together your dry ingredients. If you don’t have a fancy sifter, don’t worry, use a colander because it will work very well too. By shifting your ingredients together you are mixing your dry ingredients and giving them some air so they won’t be too dense.

You will then add your fat to the dough and work this in. You will want to coat the flour mixture with the fat. You can use a pastry blender or a fork. You will want to work in the fat. It will first take on the appearance of peas, and then it will look like coarse crumbs. Up until this point, you can work the dough as much as you want.

When you add the wet ingredients mix only until everything is blended. This will not be a smooth dough, it will be lumpy. Do not let this worry you. Only mix until all of the dough is wet. At this point, you can overwork the dough.

If your biscuits come out hard, next time, mix them less. If you follow these steps you will have a perfect breakfast treat. Be sure to serve these with some homemade sausage gravy.

Love Biscuits? Try your hand at some of these great biscuit recipes

  • Make-Ahead Freezer Biscuits
  • KFC Buttermilk Biscuits
  • Denver Biscuits
  • Sour Cream Biscuits
  • Cracker Barrel Old Country Store Biscuits
  • Stuffed Biscuits with Ham

Homemade Biscuits

You can learn how to cook easy homemade biscuits that are fluffy and tender on the inside.

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Course: Breads, Breakfast

Cuisine: American

Keyword: Homemade Biscuits

Prep Time: 10 minutes minutes

Cook Time: 15 minutes minutes

Total Time: 25 minutes minutes

Servings: 4

Calories: 371kcal

Author: Stephanie Manley

Ingredients

  • 2 cups flour
  • 3 teaspoons baking powder
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1/4 cup shortening
  • 3/4 cup milk

Instructions

  • Preheat oven to 450 degrees.

  • Sift dry ingredients together into a mixing bowl. Cut the shortening in with a pastry blender or a fork until it is like coarse crumbs. Add the milk all at once. Stir just enough to make a soft dough, do not over mix the dough. Place dough on a lightly floured surface.

  • Either pat the dough out the biscuit dough or roll the dough with a rolling pin until the dough is 1/2 inch thick. When the biscuits are at a 1/2 thickness cut with a floured cookie cutter, or glass. Place on an ungreased baking sheet. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes.

  • Biscuits are done when they are golden brown slightly freckled top and bottom with white sides. They should be twice the size of unbaked biscuits and free from excess flour. For a special treat you can brush the tops of the biscuits with melted butter.

Video

Nutrition

Calories: 371kcal | Carbohydrates: 51g | Protein: 7g | Fat: 14g | Saturated Fat: 4g | Cholesterol: 4mg | Sodium: 605mg | Potassium: 430mg | Fiber: 1g | Sugar: 2g | Vitamin A: 75IU | Calcium: 191mg | Iron: 3.2mg

About Stephanie Manley

I recreate your favorite restaurant recipes, so you can prepare these dishes at home. I help you cook dinner, and serve up dishes you know your family will love. You can find most of the ingredients for all of the recipes in your local grocery store.

Stephanie is the author of CopyKat.com's Dining Out in the Home, and CopyKat.com's Dining Out in the Home 2.

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Linda Philley

    can you make big fluffy biscuits with bisquick

    Reply

    • Stephanie

      I don’t think they will be super tall, I think for those you really need to make buttermilk biscuits.

      Reply

  2. Erika Jones

    Homemade Biscuits - Learn to Cook - CopyKat Recipes (3)
    These tasted good but didn’t rise. Think it was my baking powder. Have had it a minute. I found that they were dry. Thinking I may need to add a little more milk. I knew I should before I patted them out. But like to follow the recipe the first time. How wet should the dough be? Should it all stick together or be a little crumbly?

    Reply

    • Stephanie

      Baking powder that isn’t fresh can keep biscuits from rising. Sometimes humidity can affect flour. Your flour may have absorbed some moisture and packed it down, making it heavier so you might have gotten more flour in your recipe. I like my biscuit dough to be just dry enough so the dough doesn’t stick to your hand. Hope this helps.

      Reply

  3. Gordon Sallee

    Homemade Biscuits - Learn to Cook - CopyKat Recipes (4)
    Hi Stephanie, I enjoyed your video on baking biscuits and I noticed something you did, which I used to do. After visiting the oldest flour mill in Texas (San Antonio), they put on a baking demonstration. One thing they pointed out was we should never rotate the cutting device when cutting the raw biscuits from the mother dough. We should press down then remove the raw biscuits to be placed on a baking sheet. The reasoning behind this is that when one rotates the cookie/dough cutter it realigns the molecules in such a way as to not allow the biscuits to completely rise while baking. I would be willing to bet you would enjoy a tour of the mill and afterward it is the absolute best place in San Antonio to eat breakfast. Thank you for your video. Gordon

    Reply

    • Stephanie

      I will have to check them out. Thank you!

      Reply

  4. Don Hosfeld

    Hello, enjoy watching and using your recipes. I made these biscuits and they turned out great except they didn’t rise much at all. I followed recipe exactly making sure to measure precisely. How might you suggest I alter for next time? .

    Reply

    • Stephanie

      Do you live in a high altitude or something? I believe these recipes use baking powder, sometimes when it isn’t super fresh it’s activation is low, and it won’t work well. I might suggest that you test out baking powder by sprinkling it into some hot water, if it bubbles it is good to use.

      Reply

Leave a Reply

Homemade Biscuits - Learn to Cook - CopyKat Recipes (2024)

FAQs

What are the 4 types of biscuits? ›

Types of Biscuits
  • Rolled Biscuits. Rolled biscuits are one of the most popular baking-powder leavened quick breads. ...
  • Drop Biscuits. Drop biscuits have more milk or other liquid added to the dough than rolled biscuits. ...
  • Scones. ...
  • Shortcakes.

Are homemade biscuits better with butter or shortening? ›

The butter version rises the highest — look at those flaky layers! The shortening biscuit is slightly shorter and a bit drier, too. Butter contains a bit of water, which helps create steam and gives baked goods a boost.

Which liquid makes the best biscuits? ›

Buttermilk adds a tangy flavor to the biscuits and makes them slightly more tender.

What not to do when making biscuits? ›

5 Mistakes You're Making With Your Biscuits
  1. Mistake #1: Your butter is too warm.
  2. Mistake #2: You're using an inferior flour.
  3. Mistake #3: You use an appliance to mix your batter.
  4. Mistake #4: You don't fold the dough enough.
  5. Mistake #5: You twist your biscuit cutter.
Feb 1, 2019

What kind of flour makes the best biscuits? ›

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.

What are mourning biscuits? ›

Dr Gadoud said: “Funeral biscuits were biscuits served at or associated with funerals. They were generally two biscuits wrapped up and presented to each person attending the funeral or sent out with the invite to the funeral or afterwards.

What is the most expensive biscuit? ›

A Chennai-based consumer forum has ordered ITC Limited to pay Rs 1 lakh for packing one biscuit less in a 16-biscuit "Sun Feast Marie Light" packet.

What are hard biscuits called? ›

Hardtack (or hard tack) is a type of dense biscuit (British English) or cracker (American English) made from flour, water, and sometimes salt.

Is it better to use milk or buttermilk in biscuits? ›

Buttermilk can produce better results when baking biscuits than using regular milk or cream. Buttermilk is acidic and when it is combined with baking soda, it creates a chemical reaction that produces carbon dioxide gas, which causes the dough to rise and gives the biscuits a light and flaky texture.

Should homemade biscuits touch when baking? ›

Whether using a cast iron skillet or a baking tray, lay your biscuits so they are touching sides and all connected. This helps them rise higher, as they provide support for one another as they bake – kind of like a doughy shoulder to lean on!

Can I use Crisco instead of butter in biscuits? ›

Can I substitute butter for shortening (or vice versa) in a recipe? The short answer is yes, butter and shortening can be used interchangeably in baked goods as one-to-one swap. However, results may differ depending on fat used because butter and shortening are two very different ingredients.

What kind of flour do Southerners use for biscuits? ›

If you start asking around, any Southern chef, Southern Living Test Kitchen pro, or biscuit-making family member will swear by White Lily flour. Generations of bakers have claimed it as the secret to the perfect, flaky biscuit.

Should biscuit dough be cold before baking? ›

But if you chill your pan of biscuits in the fridge before baking, not only will the gluten relax (yielding more tender biscuits), the butter will harden up. And the longer it takes the butter to melt as the biscuits bake, the more chance they have to rise high and maintain their shape. So, chill... and chill.

What butter is best for biscuits? ›

Make sure your butter is at the correct temperature – use unsalted butter softened to room temperature for creaming and cold, unsalted butter for biscuits and pastries that require butter to be rubbed into the flour.

What are the two most important steps in biscuit making? ›

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.

What is the most important step in biscuit making? ›

Mixing. The multi-stage mixing method is preferred for its ability to produce consistent doughs which are not fully developed. Blending all dry ingredients to rub or cut the shortening into the flour until fat is fully distributed and pea-sized lumps are visible.

Why are my biscuits not light and fluffy? ›

Overworking (or Underworking) the Dough

The biscuits will be hard and tough if you stir the dough too much. They will have a floury, uneven texture if you don't mix enough. Our Test Kitchen cracked the code: Stir the dough 15 times for the perfect consistency and texture.

What fat makes the best biscuits? ›

In terms of flakiness, the best fat for making biscuits is probably lard, and vegetable shortening is the next best. In terms of flavor, however, butter is undoubtedly the best, with lard a close second.

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