When you’re looking for a sumptuous but low-effort bread to add to a meal, biscuits are a natural choice. They’re richer than most bread but less complex to throw together than croissants or brioche. They’re a less specific flavor than cornbread but can soak up soups and sauces. They’re appropriate for breakfast, dinner, and dessert. And you can make really good ones at home in about an hour!
We’ve had some fantastic biscuits in cafes and restaurants: check out Flour Bakery in Boston and Cambridge (from which this recipe is adapted), Island Creek Oyster Bar in Boston, or, if you’re in the area for some reason, The Southerner in Saugatuck, MI. In searching for a functional biscuit recipe, I wasn’t expecting to get quite a restaurant-level of quality (level of quality here appearing to be directly proportional to the amount of butter). Instead, I simply wanted something that had a rich taste, a good texture, and took me as little time as possible to make.
What I ended up with is adapted from Joanne Chang’s biscuit recipe. It’s not as flaky as a biscuit made from laminated dough, but that would take a lot longer to make. It’s a soft crumb texture that is pillowy and perfectly capable of soaking up butter or whatever else you throw on it.
I also minimize time by making them squarish instead of using a circular biscuit cutter. That way, I don’t need to keep rerolling the dough.
Instead of buttermilk, I use our homemade yogurt to get a similar sourness and acidity into the dough. There isn’t any extra sugar, which means this is not sweet at all. So, these taste great, have a good texture, and bake in only 30-45 minutes. With prep and cooling time, you’re looking at just over an hour to biscuits. Checks all the boxes!
It’s also a very simple recipe, which makes it easy to modify. You can do a butter wash right after they come out of the oven, or sprinkle with cheese before they bake. Add in sweet or savory mixings with the dry ingredients, like nuts and dried fruit or rosemary and sage.
Keep things simple and top the biscuits with our Cultured Butter. If you don’t have cornmeal for cornbread, they would be an easy addition to our Chili recipe. Spread some Lemon Curd on them the next morning for a decadent breakfast. And keep your eyes on Craft & Process for some more recipes using these soon!
Simple, soft, crumbly biscuits for pairing with everything. Uses homemade yogurt. Adapted from Flour Cookbook.
- 300 g unbleached all-purpose flour approx. 2 ½ cups
- 1 ½ tsp baking powder
- ½ tsp baking soda
- 1 ½ tsp kosher salt
- 1 stick unsalted butter chilled
- 125 g homemade whole milk yogurt approx. ½ cup
- 120 g heavy cream approx. ½ cup
- 1 cold egg
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Preheat oven to 350
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In the bowl of a stand mixer with the paddle attachment, briefly mix together the dry ingredients until combined: flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.
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Cut the butter into 10 equal sized pieces and add to the dry ingredients. Mix on low to medium speed for about 1 minute until the butter breaks down into walnut-sized pieces. The mixture should feel like large crumbs.
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Whisk together the wet ingredients in a separate bowl: yogurt, heavy cream, and egg.
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Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and butter and mix for 15 seconds on low speed until just coming together.
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Using your hands, finish pulling the dough together and press into any dry ingredients still in the bowl to get them into the dough.
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Turn out dough onto work surface.
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Press dough into a 1 inch thick rectangle, approximately 6 inches by 12 inches.
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Using a bench scraper, divide the dough into 8 equal squares, each 3 inches by 3 inches (if your rectangle is 6”x12”, you should have 1 cut horizontally and 3 cuts vertically).
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(Optional) If you want your biscuits to rise as much as possible and don’t mind a little loss of dough, trim off all the outside edges of the dough with the bench scraper. Not really necessary though--they still rise well without this but are a bit shorter on the outside edges.
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Remove the biscuits from the work surface with the bench scraper (they may stick a bit as the butter melts) and place at least 1 inch apart on a baking sheet.
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Bake for 30-45 minutes, until lightly golden brown all over. Watch carefully to ensure they don’t overbake.
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Remove from oven and cool for 5-10 minutes before eating.
Biscuits are best eaten immediately, particularly if you can get one while it’s still hot and convince everyone else that there were only 7 in the batch to begin with. Can be stored for up to 24 hours in a plastic bag.