Easy Homemade Biscuits

With just six ingredients that I bet you already have on hand, these homemade biscuits are so simple to make and buttery and soft. These biscuits are made with all butter, no shortening required. The recipe calls for just six ingredients: all-purpose flour, baking powder, sugar, salt, butter, and milk.  And then more butter once they’re finished baking because of course we need more butter.

BUT FIRST SOME HELPFUL TIPS BEFORE WE GET STARTED

• The butter and milk for this recipe need to be as cold as possible for fluffy and soft biscuits. I freeze my butter before using it and recommend keeping the milk in the refrigerator right up until it’s time to add it to the dry ingredients.

• Don’t overwork the dough! Keep in mind that you want your butter to stay as cold as possible when making these biscuits, and the more you have your hands on the dough the softer the butter will become. Definitely don’t use an electric mixer for this recipe.

• We’re going to do a little bit of laminating. This means folding the dough over itself multiple times (5-6 times here) to encourage flaky layers in our biscuits.

• Don’t use a rolling pin, use your hands to gently work the dough into a flat rectangle before cutting out your biscuits.

• Don’t be afraid to add flour to the dough if it’s too sticky while you are handling it (and make sure to work on a lightly floured surface).

Visual clue: If you look at your pre-baked biscuits you’re looking to see the butter pieces in the dough. This is what you want, the ingredients won’t be well-combined like with a cookie dough and seeing bits of butter means you’ve actually done everything right here.  Hooray!!!

Easy Homemade Biscuits

This recipe can be doubled to make 12 biscuits.

Prep Time 15 minutes Cook Time 12 minutes Total Time 27 minutes

Servings 6 biscuits

Equipment

• Box grater

• Biscuit cutter

Ingredients

• 2 cups all-purpose flour (250g)

• 1 Tablespoon baking powder

• 1 Tablespoon granulated sugar

• 1 teaspoon salt

• 6 Tablespoons unsalted butter very cold (85g), unsalted European butter is ideal, but not required

• 3/4 cup whole milk¹ (177ml) buttermilk or 2% milk will also work

Instructions

• For best results, chill your butter in the freezer for 10-20 minutes before beginning this recipe. It's ideal that the butter is very cold for light, flaky, buttery biscuits.

• Preheat oven to 425F and line a cookie sheet with nonstick parchment paper. Set aside.

• Combine flour, baking powder, sugar, and salt in a large bowl and mix well. Set aside.

• Remove your butter from the refrigerator and either cut it into your flour mixture using a pastry cutter or (preferred) use a box grater to shred the butter into small pieces and then add to the flour mixture and stir.

• Cut the butter or combine the grated butter until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs.

• Add milk, use a wooden spoon or spatula to stir until combined (don't over-work the dough).

• Transfer your biscuit dough to a well-floured surface and use your hands to gently work the dough together. If the dough is too sticky, add flour until it is manageable. 

• Once the dough is cohesive, fold in half over itself and use your hands to gently flatten layers together. Rotate the dough 90 degrees and fold in half again, repeating this step 5-6 times but taking care to not overwork the dough.

• Use your hands (do not use a rolling pin) to flatten the dough to 1" thick and lightly dust a 2 3/4" round biscuit cutter with flour. 

• Making close cuts, press the biscuit cutter straight down into the dough and drop the biscuit onto your prepared baking sheet.

• Repeat until you have gotten as many biscuits as possible and place less than 1/2" apart on baking sheet. 

• Once you have gotten as many biscuits as possible out of the dough, gently re-work the dough to get out another biscuit or two until you have at least 6 biscuits.

• Bake on 425F for 12 minutes or until tops are beginning to just turn lightly golden brown.

• If desired, brush with melted salted butter immediately after removing from oven. Serve warm and enjoy.

Notes ¹I use whole milk, but others have used buttermilk and 2% milk with success!