Creating the perfect biscuit is a theoretical question with as many answers as there are scientists racing toward finding a unified theory of Everything. With Knoxville’s first International Biscuit Festival on the horizon (June 4th and 5th), featuring a biscuit bake-off, this blog would be amiss if it didn’t feature a favorite classic biscuit recipe right about now. Of course, any baker worth her salt should claim her biscuit is the True Biscuit, that’s to be expected, but in my opinion Alton Brown, food scientist galore, has a mighty good one and it’s simple as pie:
Alton Brown’s Southern Biscuits
Ingredients
- 2 cups flour
- 4 teaspoons baking powder
- 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
- 3/4 teaspoon salt
- 2 tablespoons butter
- 2 tablespoons shortening
- 1 cup buttermilk, chilled
Directions
Preheat oven to 450 degrees.
In a large mixing bowl, combine flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Using your fingertips, rub butter and shortening into dry ingredients until mixture looks like crumbs. (The faster the better, you don’t want the fats to melt.) Make a well in the center and pour in the chilled buttermilk. Stir just until the dough comes together. The dough will be very sticky.
Turn dough onto floured surface, dust top with flour and gently fold dough over on itself 5 or 6 times. Press into a 1-inch thick round. Cut out biscuits with a 2-inch cutter, being sure to push straight down through the dough. Place biscuits on baking sheet so that they just touch. Reform scrap dough, working it as little as possible and continue cutting. (Biscuits from the second pass will not be quite as light as those from the first, but hey, that’s life.)
Bake until biscuits are tall and light gold on top, 15 to 20 minutes.
For more Alton, click here. (Can you tell we have a little crush on Alton Brown?)
