Master the art of baking with our top 10 tips for perfect flaky buttermilk biscuits! Join us at The Old Mill Test Kitchen in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, and learn the secrets behind creating biscuits that rise tall every time. From selecting quality ingredients to mastering dough consistency, we’ve got you covered. Elevate your baking skills with us!
Hi this is Jimmy for the Old Mill and today from our Test Kitchen I’m going to give you the 10 tips to making the best biscuits you’ve ever Baked tip number one you want your ingredients nice and cold of course we recommend keeping all of your meal products and airtight containers in the freezer that way it’s going to maximize freshness and for biscuits whenever you’re ready your flour is already chilled you also want to chill your
Butter or whatever fat you’re using today I’m using butter for the recipe that I’m making which is going to be for flaky layers buttermilk biscuits that you’ll find on our website tip number two you want your oven nice and hot and when I say hot I
Mean between 450 and 500° for the recipe today it calls for an oven at 475 so I’ve already got that preheated so it’s good and hot and ready to go now tip number three give yourself time biscuit if you’ve not made them before take time to learn and that’s why I’m using my
Hands today cuz you want to get a feel for it literally for what you’re doing so after you’ve got a few batches under your belt you’re just going to have a feel for it it’s going to come naturally tip number four you want to cut in your
Butter or whatever fat you’re using so again today I’m using butter and I’ve got cubes of butter that I chilled and to cut those in I’m going to flatten them out between my fingers now you can use a pastry cutter which is something an tool like this and
You can cut that butter in by running it down through the flour and you’re going to see it’s going to start to break up that butter into the flour but again because I want to use my hands I want to feel what we’re doing I’m just going to
Take those cubes of butter so I’ll find those in the flour and again I’m just going to flatten those out between my fingers so you end up with sheets of butter like that and we’re just going to keep coating that with flour so you’re pushing butter into or pushing flour
Into the butter as you’re doing this and next I’m going to make a well in the center of here and add my buttermilk and that is tip number five you want to use full fat ingredients so that’s why I’ve got butter in there and this is full fat
Buttermilk and now I’m just going to work this into the dough or into the flour to create my dough and this is going to bring us to tip number six you want a Shaggy dough for flaky biscuits now if you’re going to make something like drop biscuit it
Can be a little bit wetter if you’re going to do something that doesn’t require all the layers and I’ve seen lots of biscuits made where they pinch off the dough to make their biscuits then you don’t need as dry a dough but you’re going to see as I incorporate all
The flour into this right here that it’s going to come together and a Shaggy dough is going to be a lumpy bumpy dough and it looks like I’m just making a mess but trust the process cuz it will come together for you so it’ll take just a
Minute to get all that dough worked together but just like uh any other kind of pastry you don’t want to overwork it so you just want to get it to where it comes together and that’s going to take me just a moment here I’m going to keep turning this
Dough so I can get all that flower Incorporated in there and if a little bit falls out don’t worry about it it’s going to be just fine because you’re going to pour this out on the counter in just a second as we get ready to work the
Dough okay so I think I’ve got a pretty Shaggy dough here you can see it’s very lumpy and bumpy and it’s it’s almost a little bit dry in spots but wet in other spots and that’s exactly what we want so I’m going to get the dough off my
Fingers by just rolling that around you’ll see it just falls off into the bowl just easy like that and now I want to flour my Surface so that I can press these out now if you prefer to roll the biscuits you can certainly do that but
I’m going to get a little flour here I’m going to move this over and I’m just going to flower my Surface to help prevent it from sticking as I first get my dough out of the bowl okay so here we go just going to take the dough turn it out and see it’s
Going to look like a mess like you’ve not gotten your dough worked up well enough but you’re going to see here in a second as we start to press it all together that it’s going to come together like magic for you and that’s tip number seven you want
To create layers by layering and stacking your dough so first thing I’m going to do is I’m going to press it to about an inch thick into a rectangle just like that with my hands again I’m getting a feel for it you can see it’s kind of soft so I’m not overworking the
Dough and then I’m going to do what’s called either book ending or layering so you’re just going to stack or layer your biscuit dough and I’m going to do that by simply cutting the dough with my bench scraper like that and I’m going to pick up one layer stack it on top pick
Up the other layer stack it on top you can see it’s still a mess it’s okay if it falls apart like that because again we’re just going to keep working that and it’s all going to come together in just a moment for us so I’m going to
Repeat this process three to four times depending on what it takes and just remember that baking is a little bit of uh well quite a bit of science actually so things like the weather outside are going to affect it how hot or cold your kitchen is how hot or cold your hand
Hands are things like that all affect it now another technique is going to be folding so I could just take my bench scraper I’m going to fold that over come to the other side and fold that over bring all these pieces together and press it down and if you get any sticky pieces
Like it feels a little sticky right there it’s going to take a little flower dust that so I don’t get too sticky and at this point you can see it all pretty much rolls right off of your hands so that’s that’s when you know you’re starting to get your dough right where
You want it again I’m going to create that rectangle I’m going to cut it pick up my layers and stack them and you’ll know how many times you need to do this by how much the dough either comes together or if it still falls off into crumbled pieces like that
Which is okay again cuz this is a Shaggy dough if this were just a drop biscuit it’s going to be a wet dough and you’re just going to scoop it right out of the the bowl right into your pan before you bake it but see how this is holding
Together so we’re getting really close so I’m going to do this one more time I’m going to pick that layer up put it right there put that right there and let’s press it down and then we’ll do one more after this and we should be good to
Go and you can see now it’s all really holding together get all those scraps in the sides there because I don’t want to lose any of this dough and I’m going to show you here in just a second all those layers that we’ve created now and see how well that dough is sticking
Together so you can see all those layers that we built right into it can even see it down through those other Stacks so I’m just going to put this right on here and I’m going to press it down for a final time before we cut the biscuits so one more
Press it’s getting a little sticky so I’m just going to dust that just lightly and you can see even as I’m pressing that out those layers are just all over the place so these are going to be nice and tall and that’s why you want to build in the the layers because it’s
Going to help you get a nice tall biscuit and the reason that we’ve pressed all that butter into there and left them in in all those long layers and flakes is because when the butter melts is going to create steam steam in the middle of those layers is just going
To make that biscuit just jump up as high as it can so now we’re ready to cut the biscuits and this is tip number eight you want to cut straight down and right back up so I’m just going to cut that down come right back up I’m not
Going to twist it I’m not going to turn it I don’t want to do this or any of that because what that will do is that’ll bind the layers that we just created so I’m going to get it looks like five biscuits out of this run right
Here oh you can see that one started to stick to my my biscuit cutter there so I could lift that up again you can see the layers that we’ built in right there all across that biscuit so I’m going to pull my pan in here and I’m going to start to pull
These off the the bench here and start putting them in my pan and tip number nine your biscuits should touch because what happens there is the biscuit is going to help its neighbor rise as tall as it can and that’s what you want you want your biscuits to just get as tall as
They can if you want the all these layers in there that’s our goal today so I’m just going to work this dough just a little bit just to bring it together so I can roll out probably two more so I’m just going to fold it one or two times I
Don’t want again I don’t want to overwork it let me flower my Surface here a little bit just lightly I’m going to press that down I want to get it long so I can get two more biscuits out of this dough right here and again I’m pressing it down to
About an inch thick so I’m going to cut that biscuit out straight down and right back up cut that biscuit out straight down and right back up going to put these in My Pan again they’re all touching because they’re going to help each other rise to the
Top tip number 10 you want to fill in those gaps with all the scrap the last thing you want to do is waste any of this dough you’ve worked so hard to create so I’m just going to take these and I’m just going to tuck them
Into all the corners so I can cut those up or tear those up and just tuck them right in and don’t worry it’s not going to change the shape of your biscuits that you’ve cut it’s just going to bake right alongside and the best part about these
Little bits that you’ve tucked in there those are your samples when they come out of the oven and that way you still have plenty of biscuits for the table and they’ll be none the wiser Okay so I’m going to get my hands cleaned off here I always like to keep a wet towel
Handy so I can just do a quick wipe off of my hands so I don’t get flour everywhere I’m a bit of a messy cook and if you’re making biscuits you’re probably going to make a mess and that’s okay cuz it’s going to be a delicious
Mess when you’re done so I’m going to put these in the oven these are going to bake for about 15 to 20 minutes and so we’ll put them in here again this is at 475 and you don’t want to peek you want that oven to stay nice and hot you’re
Going to know when these these biscuits are done cuz you’re going to smell them look how beautiful golden brown those biscuits are and they rose up in the pan just like I told you they would now I’m going to let these cool for just a minute and I want to talk about the
Tools that I used here today first off I’ve got a towel on the handle of the skillet because again this was at 475° so that’s good and hot that’s going to remind me and anybody else that walks in the room that this is a hot pan the tool
That I use the most you probably saw was the bench scraper this is one of my favorites these are pretty inexpensive you can pick these up at a lot of stores we even sell them here in our general store and this I used you saw to fold in
The the dough you could use it to press things out you can use it to cut with and at the end I used it to clean up everything now I pressed all the dough out with my hands but if you have your favorite rolling pen that you like to
Use maybe it was your mother’s or grandmother’s or whatever um certainly use that if you’re comfortable with it go ahead and roll that dough out you’re still going to get the same effect with all those layers in there and you saw that I used the pastry cutter just a
Little bit but again I like to feel it but if you want to use a pastry cutter and not get all the dough all over your hands like that as much feel free to do that whatever is comfortable uh for you to do and of course I always have a
Wooden spoon uh close by and I use that to get all the flour and everything mixed up and get everything started now let’s look at these biscuits for just a second oh that is still hot look at that right there look at those layers in that biscuit just all around
There so I’m going to open that up for just just a second here oh look at that steam come out of there that is a beautiful hot biscuit now what do you do with biscuits when they come out of the oven I told you these little bits down
In here those are your samples but I’ve already touched this biscuit so I’m going to have to eat it so I’m just going to put a little butter on there watch that melt in and I’m going to enjoy myself a fresh hot biscuit I hope you’ve enjoyed these tips today I hope
They’re helpful to you and uh when you make some biscuits and you post about them on social tag us we want to see all the beautiful work that you’ve done and of course you can order any of our products online as well and uh I hope you all have a great Day