These flaky buttermilk biscuits have layers of buttery and tangy goodness, baked up high and ready to be eaten on their own or served with jam or honey.
A good biscuit can be life changing. Buttery and warm, personally I love when the exterior is a little crisp but the interior is soft. Perfection. I have a really great fluffy buttermilk biscuit recipe but I wanted to create one for flaky buttermilk biscuits as well.
What’s the difference between the two you ask? Well, these flaky buttermilk biscuits are the taller biscuits that you can see all the flaky layers from the sides. My fluffy buttermilk biscuit recipe are sort of in between a drop biscuit and a traditional biscuit. They are soft and fluffy and require less work/time.
The technique on these flaky buttermilk biscuits I learned from America’s Test Kitchen. This is how they make their biscuits, and I trust them when it comes to science and technique in baking. If you’ve never seen one of their cookbooks, they often go through other ingredients and methods they tried and the science of WHY the recipe was written that way and works.
Baking Tips & Notes
As I said, the main difference between these flaky buttermilk biscuits and my fluffy buttermilk biscuits is the technique. The dough for these biscuits is pushed together, then rolled out, and folded like a letter. The process is repeated a total of 4 times to create tons and tons of layers. When rolling out your dough, don’t be afraid to flour your work surface, the rolling pin and the top of the biscuits. You don’t want to use handfuls, but light dustings are just fine.
As with any biscuit or scone recipe, you want to handle the dough as little as necessary and keep your ingredients cold. Freeze your butter for about 20 minutes before starting, keep your buttermilk in the refrigerator until you need it, and make sure to chill your biscuits before putting them in a hot oven. Using a bench scraper instead of your hands to push in the edges of the dough can be helpful as well to prevent using your hands (which are nice and toasty) from warming up the butter.
Finally, you can brush the tops of these biscuits with butter before putting them in the oven, but I prefer brushing them with buttermilk for a little more tangy flavor.
Flaky Buttermilk Biscuits Key Ingredients
- Salted butter – Salted butter tends to have a slightly higher water count than unsalted butter. When you are making biscuits, you keep the buttermilk cold and flatten it. When it heats up in the oven it creates steam and lift, giving you all those layers and flaky buttermilk biscuits. Unsalted will work, just add a little flaky sea salt after they come out of the oven.
- Buttermilk – There are things like buttermilk powder or the vinegar in milk trick, but nothing is the same as using actual buttermilk. Choose full fat over low fat. Biscuits are not somewhere where we are worrying about the fat content. Fat = flavor.
- Bread flour – Using bread flour for biscuits probably feels like going against everything you’ve ever been taught if you’ve made biscuits before. I get it. However, because these biscuits you are rolling and working the dough, the gluten helps with the rise of the biscuit dough. It seems counterintuitive but I promise it works. If you only have AP, that’s okay too. I would recommend using King Arthur because it does have a little bit higher protein content than some other all purpose flours.
Ingredients
- 240 g AP flour 2 cups
- 120 g Bread flour 1 cup
- ½ tbsp Sea salt
- 1 tbsp Baking powder
- ¾ tsp Baking soda
- 170 g Salted butter 12 tbsp, very cold/semi-frozen
- 42 g Honey
- 255 g Buttermilk 1 cup + 2 tbsp, cold
- 2 tbsp Buttermilk for brushing
Instructions
- Place your butter in the freezer for about 20 minutes.
- In a large bowl, add your flours, salt, baking powder, and baking soda. Mix together.
- Remove your butter from the freezer, and drop into the dry ingredients to coat.
- Grate the butter into your dry ingredients, stopping about halfway through grating to fluff the shreds into the flour mixture, coating them and repeating once you have finished grating all the butter.
- Create a well in the middle of the bowl and add your buttermilk and honey.
- Mix until a shaggy dough forms.
- Flour your workspace and empty the bowl onto the surface. Press the dough into a square/rectangle.
- Roll out your dough into about an 8×10 rectangle. Using a bench scraper (or floured hands if you do not have one) fold the top third of the rectangle on the short side onto itself, and then repeat with the bottom half. This will look like a folded letter.
- Turn your dough so the short side faces you, and repeat rolling out and folding 3 more times so you will have rolled out and folded the dough a total of 4 times for each.
- Roll your dough out into a 8.5 inch square, then transfer to a sheet of parchment and place on a baking sheet.
- Place the baking sheet in the refrigerator and let the dough chill for about 30-45 minutes.
- While your dough chills, preheat your oven to 425°F.
- When the dough has chilled, remove from the refrigerator and cut the dough into 9 equal size squares.
- Brush the tops of the biscuits with buttermilk, then place on the upper third of your oven and bake for 16-18 minutes.
- Biscuits are ready when the tops are golden brown and have risen. Remove from oven and transfer to a wire rack to cool. Let the biscuits rest for at least 15 minutes before consuming. Enjoy!
