Copycat Restaurant Style Biscuits recipe- All She Cooks (2024)

FAQs

What is the secret to a good biscuit? ›

Use Cold Butter for Biscuits

For flaky layers, use cold butter. When you cut in the butter, you have coarse crumbs of butter coated with flour. When the biscuit bakes, the butter will melt, releasing steam and creating pockets of air. This makes the biscuits airy and flaky on the inside.

The butter version rises the highest — look at those flaky layers! The shortening biscuit is slightly shorter and a bit drier, too. Butter contains a bit of water, which helps create steam and gives baked goods a boost.

Buttermilk adds a tangy flavor to the biscuits and makes them slightly more tender.

There is some actual science behind why White Lily flour is lighter than others and, thus, better suited for items like biscuits and cakes.

Cut off uneven edges and put these scraps to the side; clean cuts on all sides will encourage rise. Pat scraps together to make 1 odd-shaped ninth biscuit. Place biscuits close together in a 9-inch square pan and brush with melted salted butter. Place pan on top of the warm stove for 10 to 15 minutes to rise.

Tips to Make Perfect Biscuits

Here are some of my best tips to get flaky, delicious biscuits every single time you bake them: Freeze the Crisco shortening before starting this recipe. The colder your Crisco is, the lighter and flakier your biscuits will be.

In terms of flakiness, the best fat for making biscuits is probably lard, and vegetable shortening is the next best. In terms of flavor, however, butter is undoubtedly the best, with lard a close second.

Buttermilk can produce better results when baking biscuits than using regular milk or cream. Buttermilk is acidic and when it is combined with baking soda, it creates a chemical reaction that produces carbon dioxide gas, which causes the dough to rise and gives the biscuits a light and flaky texture.

White Lily brand flour, especially the self-rising flour, is the gold standard among Southern cooks who make biscuits on a regular basis. White lily, self rising. I use it for everything except those thing I make using either cake flour or yeast.

How do you make Paula Deen's biscuits? ›

In a pinch, substitute butter with another semi-solid fat

The resulting biscuits are often flatter, denser, and less flaky in texture. Without undergoing the Maillard reaction, biscuits made with oil also lack the richness and allure of butter-baked biscuits.

Yes. If you sift flour, it becomes aerated and less dense. “A cup of flour sifted before measuring will weigh 20 to 30 percent less than a cup of flour sifted after measuring — a difference that can make a huge impact on the texture of finished baked goods,” Cook's Illustrated says.

While over-handling your biscuit dough can make your baked goods turn out like hockey pucks, under-mixing it while you're still adding all of your ingredients can result in floury or grainy biscuits.

As explained by Reader's Digest, these biscuits are traditionally made with flour ground from soft wheat, a variety of grain that grows readily in the American South due to its warm, humid climates. This type of wheat has about half as much gluten as hard wheat — the type of wheat used in bread flour.

The two keys to success in making the best biscuits are handling the dough as little as possible as well as using very cold solid fat (butter, shortening, or lard) and cold liquid. When the biscuits hit the oven, the cold liquid will start to evaporate creating steam which will help our biscuits get very tall.

Mixing. The multi-stage mixing method is preferred for its ability to produce consistent doughs which are not fully developed. Blending all dry ingredients to rub or cut the shortening into the flour until fat is fully distributed and pea-sized lumps are visible.

Overworking (or Underworking) the Dough

The biscuits will be hard and tough if you stir the dough too much. They will have a floury, uneven texture if you don't mix enough. Our Test Kitchen cracked the code: Stir the dough 15 times for the perfect consistency and texture.