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Hey, I'm John Kanell. And today on Preppy Kitchen, we're making some tender, flaky, buttery homemade biscuits. So, let's get started. First off, preheat your oven to 425, so it's nice and hot. Grab a rimmed baking sheet and line it with parchment. Now, in a large bowl, we're going to combine the dry ingredients, starting with 4 cups or 480 g of all-purpose flour. Perfect. For the slightest kiss of sweetness and a more tender, soft biscuit, I'm adding 2 Tbsp of granulated sugar. To puff things up, 1 Tbsp of baking powder. Before baking powder was invented in the mid-1800s, your biscuits would be dense, not fluffy. Thanks, baking powder. And for some nice contrast, 2 and 1/2 tsp of salt.
One, two, and a half. I will say, know your salt. Some brands of salt are saltier than others. Some are more harsh, like iodized. If you're using a super fine salt, more will fit into a spoon. If you're using a really coarse salt, less will fit into a spoon. So, kosher sea salt or however much of the salt you're using. Grab a whisk and a copy of my book, Everyday Baking. Over 100 recipes, just baking and all my favorite desserts. Okay, mix, mix, mix. These biscuits, of course, need some ice-cold butter. So, grab it out of the fridge. We want 1 cup or 226 g of unsalted butter.
Today, I'm using American butter, but you can use Kerrygold or Plugrá, a European-style butter, for a more buttery taste. And I will tell you, if your hands are weak or arthritic and working the butter is a lot of work for you, European butter is much softer cuz it's a higher fat content, so it's easier to work it together. I'm going to cube this up into small pieces to give it a head start. Mhm, this knife is cutting through this butter like butter. Some people like to freeze their butter and grate it into the dry ingredients. I do that sometimes, but the trade-off is that you always have pretty small pieces of butter. When you work cubed butter
in, you want some pieces that are larger than others. So, it's a fine hack. I do it sometimes myself. This is the best practice. Add your butter into your flour mixture, and now using your clean hands or a pastry blender, we're going to work the butter into the flour until we have a range of sizes from small, like little lentils, all the way to almonds. Small ones. And by the way, if you like my videos, hit that subscribe button. There's two new recipes every single week. So, work that butter into the flour. So, this recipe, by the way, is for an American homemade biscuit. If you're
watching this from abroad, especially if you're in the UK, you'll have some questions. You're like, "This isn't a biscuit. Biscuits are what we would call cookies. And what you're making, in fact, looks like a scone or scone." So, biscuits are related to scones. And the main difference is that a scone would have an egg to help hold it together, whereas a biscuit will just have use cream, milk, or buttermilk. And we have different names for different things. So, this looks like an English scone, but it's going to be a bit more flaky, tall, and have a bit less structure. Mind you, American scones look nothing like British scones because British scones look like American biscuits.
That's the end of that story. And when I say biscuits are an American invention, they're specifically a southern invention. This is more of a regional dish until KFC popularized it in the 50s. And then it spread across [clears throat] the country. So here I have a range of sizes, all the way from almonds to small pieces. It's time to grab 1 and 1/3 cups or 320 mils of cold milk, preferably whole. That higher fat content will make the biscuits that much more decadent. I'm going to drizzle the milk in while I fold with my spatula. We're going to end up with a really messy shaggy dough, but that's what we want. And you'll notice I'm reaching into the fridge for all my ingredients.
Everything should be cold here. Unlike when you're making a cake or muffins or a quick bread and you want everything to be room temperature, this is more like a pastry where we want everything cold. More milk. More mixing. Just hunting for big pockets of flour so I can douse them with some cold milk. This is a basic homemade biscuit or a classic one. You could add so many mixings here. Your favorite herbs would go lovely. Dried or fresh. You can add some nice firm and really flavorful cheese in. Scallions, some caramelized garlic. The list goes on. So once you have the basics down, you can begin adding your
favorite ingredients and really make the recipe your own. At this moment, I have a very messy shaggy dough. So I'm going to dump it out onto the counter and work it. But first, we need a little flour. Dump this onto the counter. All of it, including what's under spatula. Flour your hands lightly. Now we're going to work this into a 1-in thick quadrilateral. [snorts and laughter] Square or rectangle, your choice. It doesn't really matter. Now we're going to cut it in half crosswise. And stack it. Ooh. Look at those big, beautiful pieces of butter in there. That's nice. Now we're going to pat this
back into a rectangle and repeat our folding, our cutting, and our stacking three more times for a total of four. This isn't a take those big pieces of butter I showed you and turn them into lovely pages of butter so that your biscuits have beautiful layers. It's almost like we're making a rough puff. All right. Back into a 1-in rectangle. Feel free to grab more flour. This should be moving around fairly freely. Cut it in half lengthwise [snorts] and stack it. We're halfway through. This might look a bit complicated, but it is quite easy and really satisfying to do. If you think to yourself, this is not for me. I don't like any of this extra
work, look up drop biscuits. I have a recipe for that on the blog and I also have a video for it. Those just scoop, drop them on, and bake them up. Cut number three. Stack number three. And you can see here I have a lot more layers. Press that down. Okay. the last pat. Ooh, you know what these go really well with? Honey butter. I'm going to show you how to make that. It's so easy. Right now, you can either pat this or roll it to a thickness of 3/4 to 1 in.
This needs to chill out and rest because you might notice there's some bounce back. I've developed the gluten from working this, even though it's very minimal. It's time to cut these. You want to have a 2 and 1/2 or 3-in round cutter. You could also have a scalloped biscuit cutter if you like. This should be floured before and after each cut. So, pop this into the flour. Now, we're going to cut this and just press down. Don't try and twist.
This can go right onto our rimmed baking sheet. More flour for your cutter and make the next cut. You'll end up with about 12 biscuits, give or take. Depending, of course, on the size of cutter and how thick you patted your biscuits. These guys are best fresh out of the oven, but they last at room temperature in a sealed container for up to 3 days. I like to warm mine up in the oven or toaster oven. You could also take these guys and freeze them for up to 3 months. Once you've cut as many biscuits as possible, it's time to bring the dough back together and use the rest of it up.
These will not look as pretty, but they'll be just as delicious. I'm going to get less than 12 biscuits, but I really prefer a thicker one. They make me happy. This is the one I'm going to eat right out of the oven. You'll want to freeze these for 20 minutes so they really have time to set up. If they went into the oven now, it would be a disaster. We want a range of sizes for our butter pieces and for the butter pieces to be nice and cold when this goes into a very hot oven because the butter will melt and steam up then lifting the layers of our biscuits so they rise up nice and high and create that lovely airy flaky
texture that's so characteristic of this dish. If you just popped this into the oven now, the butter is already too close to room temperature and it would melt out and you'd get none of the steaming. So, it'd just be a total mess. Into the freezer you go. Our biscuits are out of the freezer and ready to go into the oven. 425 for 20 minutes until they're puffed and golden. Then, they get a finishing touch. While our biscuits are baking, we're going to make some delicious honey butter for the inside. Grab some room temperature butter. I love using salted butter for this, especially a salted cultured butter, but if you don't have it, add a healthy pinch of salt to your unsalted butter. Grab maybe 2 tsp or so of honey. This is from our hives on the
farm. It's delicious. And you're just going to mix that in with about twice as much butter. Give that a good mix, and now you have the most incredibly delicious spread. You could also mix in, by the way, a drop or two of vanilla or vanilla bean paste. Mm. Fresh out of the oven, and I already ate the little mouth-formed one. It was delicious. Brush melted butter right over the tops. This will give you some extra richness, and they'll also look even nicer. Straight out of the oven, break them apart, spread butter as desired, and just like that, they're ready to enjoy.
Practically perfect in every way. And look at that beautiful height and all those lovely layers. I hope you get a chance to make this delicious recipe. And if you like my videos, hit that subscribe button and check out my side dish playlist.
