Tall and Flaky Buttermilk Biscuits-Southern Style

These classic buttermilk biscuits are tall, flaky, and buttery with a perfectly crisp golden crust. With just a few simple ingredients and the right technique, you’ll have warm, homemade biscuits that melt in your mouth—perfect for any meal!

 

Easy to Make Southern Buttermilk Biscuits from Scratch

While making homemade biscuits might sound intimidating, I’m here to change your mind. With basic ingredients and a few simple steps, you can make biscuits from scratch that are so much better than the ones you buy in a tube, and they’ll never be hockey pucks!

Before You Get Started

Here are some tips that will help make your biscuits perfectly tall and flaky:

• Cold butter and buttermilk – this helps create those tall layers
• Stack the dough – gently stacking and rolling the dough creates layers
• Don’t touch the dough with your hands any more than you have to
• When cutting, cut straight down, don’t turn the biscuit cutter
• Don’t substitute the buttermilk, it adds a little flavor but also reacts with the baking soda to give you tall biscuits.

I may be a little biased, but I think Southerners make the best biscuits! We’ve been making them for a long time, a meal is just not complete without buttermilk biscuits. They’re tall, crisp on the outside but light and fluffy with lots of layers inside. I’m here to say, I don’t think you’ll find a better buttermilk biscuit recipe. I’ve made these classic biscuits about a zillion times and there’s nothing better.

Whether you just add butter or sausage gravy, they’re phenomenal. And don’t even get me started as to how good they are when used for a chicken sandwich.

If you want to change up the classic biscuit recipe, try making some softer than air cream cheese biscuits, or make them sweet with honey infused biscuits.

Just a Few Basic Ingredients

Butter – I use unsalted; just be sure it’s cold. You can even use frozen butter. Some like to grate it with a box grater, but I find cutting it into cubes works great.

Flour – regular all-purpose flour makes flaky biscuits. My favorite is King Arthur or Bob’s Red Mill since neither are bleached. 

Pro tip: Not sure which is the best flour to use for biscuits, I’ve broken down all the pros and cons for bread flour vs all-purpose flour.

Buttermilk – use this to activate the baking soda. As with the butter, make sure it’s cold. You can substitute whole milk instead, but it might not be as fluffy. For a true Southern biscuit you should use buttermilk.

Pantry staples – baking powder, baking soda, sugar and salt.

Egg and heavy cream – to brush on top of the biscuits for a golden brown finish. Substitute whole milk if you don’t have cream, you can also use buttermilk and skip the egg.

Make Some Old-Fashioned Southern Biscuits

Step 1: Make the dough

Add the dry ingredients to a food processor along with the cold pieces of butter. Process until the butter resembles coarse crumbs. If you don’t have a food processor you can use a pastry cutter. Pour in the buttermilk and process just until it looks shaggy, it should not form a ball.

Step 2: Create the layers

Dump the dough out onto a lightly floured surface. Handling as little as possible, form it into a rectangle. You should be able to see little specks of butter in the dough. Cut the dough into four sections.

Stack the layers on top of each other.

Pat this into another rectangle and repeat the process 3 more times. By cutting instead of making the dough into folds, you keep the dough as cold as possible.

Pro Tip: Stacking and re-stacking the dough creates lots of flaky layers in the finished biscuits. Use really cold butter and buttermilk and keep your warm hands off the dough as much as possible. You want it to stay cold.

Step 3: Roll

Use a rolling pin to roll the dough into a 1-inch thickness. Using a round biscuit cutter, cut straight down without twisting. This keeps the layers tall. Place the rounds on the prepared baking sheet and freeze for 10 minutes.

Step 4: Brush with cream

Beat the egg and cream together. After removing the biscuits from the freezer brush the tops with the mixture and bake. Try adding some flaky salt and pepper to the tops and bake for about 15 minutes.

By following these steps you’ll get tall, flaky, melt-in-your-mouth biscuits that will make any meal a little better. They’re so scrumptious that you’ll want to make them for every meal.

How to store Biscuits

If you find yourself with more biscuits than you can eat right away, you have a few different options for storage. If you plan to eat them in a day, place the cooled biscuits in an airtight container and store them at room temperature. Biscuits get stale quickly, so it’s better to freeze what you can’t eat the same day.

They will stay fresh in the freezer for a couple of months.

If you loved this recipe, give it a star ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ rating! Also, snap a picture of your finished dish and share it with me on Instagram using the hashtag #butterandbaggage and tagging me @butterandbaggage.