Go to the Recipe: Buttermilk Biscuits
The video shows salted butter (whereas the ingredient list doesn't specify). Could you comment on why you chose this (is it functional in some way) and if possible, how to adjust the salt if using unsalted butter?
Love the idea of freezing the butter and grating it. Can this technique also be used to make short crust pastry?
Two ingredient questions; Not everybody lives in USA, therefore not everbody have access to self-raising flour and buttermilk. I can create my own flour by ( 1 cup all purpose flour with 1 tsp baking powder and 1/4 tsp salt) do you agree with these proportions, and how can you substitude buttermilk?Thank you
We understand that not everyone can get all of these ingredients. You should use cake flour if at all possible rather than AP. And your ratios seem about right to make it self-rising. As for buttermilk, you can sour your own milk by adding about 20g of vinegar to 250 g of whole milk. Let it sit overnight.
Yes, it works great.
I'm curious about this, too. I typically only stock unsalted butter...
- originally posted by John Jensen
As a chef, I always stock salted butter. It is more durable and has better flavor, from the salt yes, but also because the salt helps it from oxidizing. The amount of salt added to butter is trivial to getting salt into any recipe. I frankly have never understood why anyone ever buys unsalted, unless it is a dirtary restriction.
- originally posted by Grant Lee Crilly
In any recipe where you cut butter, I always freeze and grate it or run it through a cold grinder if I was doing lots. It makes it much more uniform in any shortened doughs.
Wow, fascinating. I've always been an unsalted guy b/c I like the contrast of spreading sweet butter on toast and then scattering Maldon over it. But you are making me want to give salted butter another chance, I bet I haven't bought it in 15 years.
If you are in Canada, Brodie XXXX Self Rising Flour works well. I found it at Safeway. If you can't find White Lily.
If one were to freeze them prior to baking, would you suggest that they be baked from frozen, or would you thaw them first?I used Aunt Jemima self-rising flour as I could not find the White Lily and I thought the results were just fine. I will seek out the White Lily for a comparison..
Baking from frozen usually is fine, but you'll need to allow for a longer baking time and if they brown too much you may want to lower the baking temperature by 10 degrees or so.
What brand of buttermilk do you recommend? I've noticed lots of stabilizers in nationally available brands and I'm wondering to what degree they would affect a recipe.
In general the stabilizers will not cause problems, unless you start adding other stabilizers, in which case you can get strange things happening. I'll check with Nick to see what buttermilk he used when doing the development work.
Thanks!
Made it today. I added one small modification, a spoonful or so of brown butter solids. It gave those to begin with great cookies a very deep and buttery flavour, almost like croissants.
Great idea! You should try making a "fork" of the recipe for your variation - just press the "Fork" button in the top right. We'd love to see it!
I just did, this is a very cool feature. I put 30 gr brown butter solids in the recipe, did not really measure at the time but seems about right
Cool! Don't forget to give it a new title (maybe something like Buttermilk Biscuits with Brown Butter Crispies) and mark it published (in the upper right when you are editing) so that the world can know of your innovation.
Are you really supposed to add 15g of extra baking powder to the self-rising flour? When I made these they had a very bitter/salty flavor that I attributed to the baking powder. I'm wondering if I measured incorrectly, or if I'm misreading the recipe and the extra baking powder is only needed when using plain flour.
I guess you could say it works grate.Love the recipe, I always keep a few in the freezer for a quick bake in the toaster oven. The convection as well as the heating from the top element really help with the golden tops.
Hello Bojan or Michael, What are brown butter solids?
Brown butter solids are the solids that form when you heat butter, see this recipe for details:
http://www.chefsteps.com/activities/brown-butter-s...
Hi I was planning on making these soon and was wondering if I could just use unsalted butter instead of salted and just add extra salt? Also how much more salt would i need to make up the difference? Thank you.
A (critical) step that's shown in the video that's missing from the written instructions is "flour the parchment." My wife made these for the first time this morning and had a hell of a time getting the biscuits off the parchment (post-freezer).
Why is Baking Powder required though self rising flour is used?
Thanks
These are amazing. I'm a southern girl and White Lily SR is a pantry staple. So good with grilled pork tenderloin and mustard sauce.
Biscuits/scones usually require a relatively large amount of leavening for their rise and self-raising flour doesn't normally contain enough.
nailed it today . awesome. some of you complain about something, all you need to do is follow this guys recipe and use your instinct. and done. thanks guys. keep it up .
You certainly can do that.
Kudos for using White Lily Self-Rising Flour and Buttermilk, standard for Southern style biscuits. Most Southerners make round biscuits using a biscuit cutter, empty can or even a glass to stamp out the biscuits. Raised in the South eating biscuits daily but never saw anyone put pulled pork in a biscuit.
Your non-professional followers would appreciate ingredients in ounces rather than grams as most of us do not have metric based tools. Maybe a "click to convert" button?
Just made a batch of these. My oven decided that the preset temp was just a suggestion. Baked them about 10 minutes longer than called for just to brown the tops. They didn't rise much, and I had just about decided that I'd managed to weaponize biscuits again. Then I sampled one of them.
Ho Li Fok! (Chinese biscuit philosopher). They're not heavy as lead, and they're delicious. These are definitely not something to be smothered in sausage gravy; they're too damn good by themselves. Though there was very little rise, the crumb is light. Of course, anything with two sticks of butter in the recipe can't be bad. I'm gonna do these again 'till I get it to come out the way I expect it to be. Did I mention they're delicious?
Did you use too much butter? 170g is not two sticks...just a thought
By the ingredients list of the recipe, click the words that say "Scale Recipe". You can switch to ounces...
Can I use reconstituted Bob 's Red Mill buttermilk powder in lieu of the liquid buttermilk?
I won't speak for ChefSteps, but I have used buttermilk powder many times to make biscuits nearly as good, if not just as good, as with regular buttermilk. I simply add the buttermilk powder to my dough and add regular milk for my liquid. If I were to use water, I'd probably increase the amount of buttermilk powder and increase the butter a little. You need the fat, which is usually reduced in buttermilk powder.
Thank you chefsteps!! Biscuits came out great! Although I used unsalted butter and added smoked sea salt on top and herb butter instead of egg wash.
I was wondering if anyone knows if OO flour would be comparable to White Lily and would additional baking soda and salt be required with 00 to make it self rising?
There's no such thing as too much butter. :-)
But thanks! (I did use the correct amount. It just tasted like twice as much.)
I have some buttermilk powder at home and will try it this weekend. I have also used the powder form to make other recipes of biscuits and they turned out well. So i guess the powder form is ok to use for this recipe by chefsteps.
He did that on the video
I'm debating with myself if i prefer this soft fluffy interiour, or if i want to alter the recipe and make them a little flaky like butter pastry - any thoughts?
making these on an empty stomach sucks! Fortunately, in about 30 minutes, I'll have these biscuits to eat on an empty stomach!
These turned out excellent! The key is definitely the flour, which wasn't too hard to find at my local wal mart. I had to cook mine for about 23 min. rather than 14, to get the brownest that I wanted, put the texture and taste is great. At the beginning of each recipe, I have to convert oz. to Cups, tsp. and tbsp...is there any better way to convert these recipes? Thank you Chef Steps!
I danced down an awkward path tonight. I got my scale out. Changed the mode off of Oz, and started loading up the flour. I used a little corn starch to lighten the all purpose flour I had. I added all of the other dry ingredients and blended them together (along with some buttermilk powder). I went to weigh my milk. What are those units. Those don't look like grams... dwl... I have no idea still, even after going to my favorite query engine, what dwl means... I realized that I better weigh my liquid using the same metric so I did. When I switched it back to grams, the number was much different... Oh well. I did not weigh my butter though. I just grated two sticks...
The liquid mixed in just fine. It was a little wet. I dusted it with flour and balled it on the the jelly roll pan. It spread nicely into a rectangle. I put it into the freezer. I took it out of the freezer... I cut it into 12 pieces... DAGNABIT.. I forgot to put flour underneath...
I spread them out the best I could and shoved them in the oven.
They filled up the pan. I cut them out. They were the best biscuits I have made...
I would love to try this recipe am I able too just use bread flour instead of the self rising flour or should i use some active dry yeast cause that link they they dont ship to canada
You would be better off with all-purpose flour than with bread, which has higher protein than is ideal. A web search will show you various formulae for how much baking powder and salt to add to that flour.
1.5 grams
CS has an international following. Most of us use nothing else - and there's a lot more of us :-)
Made these last night. I will bake at 425°F or so next time. They got to 190°F internal but weren't brown or done externally at time recommended. After cooling a few minutes, I opted to raise temp to 425°F and stuck the pan back in for 6 more minutes. That helped. I was using a convection oven.
I used White Lily non-self-rising, added BP and salt. I balked at the additional BP to add, but did so. Didn't taste any off flavors and they sure did rise, so I guess I'll leave that alone.
They spread out and nearly filled the half-sheet pan. They were tender and had good crumb.
Structure was weak, they wanted to fall apart. I think I'll go for rounds next time, and maybe brush with melted butter instead. Otherwise, good tasting.
Am I crazy? I thought this was going to be a Sous Vide recipe. Did I miss something?
@Marie Ziniti No, you just have made a shitty attempt at humor.
Made a slightly altered version for dinner tonight. I used half milk, half sour cream instead of buttermilk and I added 4 oz. Of blue cheese crumbles. Turned out delicious. They did need about 23 minutes though to finish.
If you freeze these ... any tips on baking. Can you bake from frozen or should you thaw them first?
Thaw them in the fridge, bake when fully thawed but still cold
Don't forget to chill the grater too. My hands are warm so i have to be fast with the butter grating process, finally someone gets it.
Me-maw never put egg in the biscuit dough...
It isn’t in the dough. It’s used as an egg wash. Read the recipe.
@Michelle Barnes Who cares? I'll bet there's a lot of things on this website that your "me-maw" didn't do; or would even consider food. You can do 1 of a couple things:
1. Try them anyway
2. Omit the egg wash when making them
3. Find another recipe website that appeals more to your delicate sensibilities.
AGREED
Old message, but my suggestion is buy a $15 scale vs. trying to convert. I love getting this to the gram vs. trying to smooth over a dry measuring cup/spoon that isn't accurate.
No. Clearly says 15 grams. Too much.
I much prefer recipes to be in grams....I think most bakers would agree....I only default to metric when cooking
