For bakers, making quick bread in their spare time is like nothing at all. Although there are three types of quick breads -- each with distinct methods and level of difficulty -- they ultimately take less time to prepare than most baked goods thanks to a reliance on chemical leavening for the recipes. Biscuits are especially simple to make and a fine example would be Buttermilk Biscuits.

Similar to the Buttermilk Chicken covered here, Buttermilk Biscuits are a glorious part of Southern cuisine that's enriched with tarty dairy. In baking, these biscuits can serve many uses; even as a side dish for the former.

Today's recipe will show just how simple it is to bake them.

Why it's simple

There are three types/methods, including creaming, muffin, and biscuit. Obviously, any biscuit recipe will call for the method named after it and it pretty much involves making a dough. This dough is akin to that used for pie shells. Therefore, the ratio for biscuit dough is three parts flour, two parts liquid, and one part fat.

However, in order to achieve soft and flaky Buttermilk Biscuits, the dough must be folded before it's rolled and cut to create layers similar to puff pastry. While this might sound a little tedious, there's no butter packet being thrown in between the dough when it's folded and rolled, making for a simpler process.

Below is a recipe that brings all of this together.

The recipe

Ingredients:

  • Two cups flour
  • One tbs granulated sugar
  • One tsp salt
  • Two tbsp baking powder
  • Half tsp baking soda
  • Three fourths cups buttermilk
  • Two thirds stick unsalted butter, cold
  • One tsp vanilla extract
  • Buttermilk for washing

Directions:

  1. Preheat the oven to 220°C. Line a baking sheet with parchment. Separate the dry ingredients from the wet ingredients.
  2. Sift the flour, sugar, salt, baking powder, and baking soda together over a bowl. Cut in the cold butter. Continue cutting until the dry mixture becomes mealy. Do not overmix.
  3. Make a well in the dry mixture and pour the buttermilk and vanilla extract into it. Stir everything together using a wooden spoon.
  4. Pour in the buttermilk and stir with a wooden spoon until the mixture starts to hold together. Do not overmix.
  5. Dust a surface with flour and place the dough on top. Roll the dough out into a nine by five rectangle. Fold the dough in half to form a square and roll it out to form another rectangle up to four more times.
  6. Roll the dough out until it's half an inch thick. Cut discs out of the dough with a two-inch dough cutter and place onto the parchment-lined baking sheet. Brush the surface of the biscuits with buttermilk.
  7. Bake the biscuits for 12 to 15 minutes or until the surfaces turn light brown.
  8. Transfer the biscuits to a cooling rack and let them sit for a few minutes.

Servings: 12.
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