Old Fashioned Biscuits Recipe (2024)

FAQs

How did they make biscuits in the old days? ›

With no leavening agents except the bitter-tasting pearlash available, beaten biscuits were laboriously beaten and folded to incorporate air into the dough which expanded when heated in the oven causing the biscuit to rise.

However, I do like the height and tenderness shortening lends in cookies. That's why I would suggest using 50% butter and 50% shortening – or some similar combination – to get the best of both worlds if you're baking cookies. However, when it comes to pie crust and biscuits, I prefer 100% butter.

What makes biscuits Southern? Besides being passed down by beloved grandmothers, Southern biscuits are typically made with flour made from soft red winter wheat, such as White Lily.

The earliest biscuits were a simple combination of flour and water that resulted in little more than baked paste. Soon people learned that adding fat to the recipe made them tasty and flaky. In the Northern states butter is the favored lipid. In the South, lard or shortening is the standard.

The Earliest Evidence

The Romans certainly had a form of biscuit, what we'd now call a rusk and, as the name suggests, it was essentially bread which was re-baked to make it crisp. It kept for longer than plain bread, and was useful for travellers and soldiers' rations.

For soft and fluffy biscuits, blend the liquid and dry ingredients just until the dough "resembles cottage cheese," Sonoskus says. This stops you from activating too much gluten in the flour and ending up with a tougher biscuit that doesn't rise as high.

While there are plenty of flour varieties to choose from, White Lily reigns above all else for Southern bakers and is the crème de la crème when it comes to the flour we use for any biscuit recipe.

*Substitute buttermilk, light cream, or heavy cream for the whole milk, if you prefer; use enough of whatever liquid you choose to bring the dough together readily, without you having to work it too much. The higher-fat liquid you use, the more tender and richer-tasting your biscuits will be.

Butter is the winner here. The butter biscuits were moister with that wonderful butter taste and melt-in-your mouth texture. I'd be curious to test out substituting half or just two tablespoons of the butter with shortening to see if you get the best of both.

Is buttermilk or heavy cream better for biscuits? ›

That really comes down to your preference. Both buttermilk and heavy cream have their benefits, so the ultimate decision in choosing the "best" ingredient for biscuits comes down to what you enjoy most. No matter which one you use, your biscuits are sure to be the star of any meal.

In the North, the flour was milled from hard winter wheat, which has a higher protein level — great for bread and other baked goods, but not ideal for biscuits, as it can make them tough. So, while biscuits were certainly baked in Northern kitchens, they didn't replace bread as the carbohydrate of choice.

Use good butter and dairy

Because biscuit recipes call for so few ingredients, it's important that every one is high quality—you'll really taste the difference. Catherine recommends splurging a bit on a grass-fed butter or European-style butter (now's the time to reach for Kerrygold!).

Why You'll Love White Lily^® Flour. Simply put, our flour isn't like the others. Milled from 100% soft red winter wheat, White Lily^® Flour is finer in texture with a lower protein content, which makes for fluffier biscuits, the softest cookies, and the most tender cakes.

Substitute 3: Egg Whites

For cakes and muffins, another easy baking soda substitute is egg whites, says Lofts. They can act as a leavener, which is what they do in a classic French Genoise cake. It's best to use this substitute only for cookie recipes or baked goods that do not contain any liquid.

THE ABERFFRAW BISCUIT (or cake) goes by a number of names, but whatever you call it, with a tradition dating back to the 13th century, it's often held up as the oldest recognised biscuit in Britain.

The biscuit making process is elaborate and continuous. The ingredients are combined to form a dough, which is kneaded and rolled to a uniform thickness. It is cut into biscuit shapes and placed in a travelling oven. Some biscuits necessitate special preparation and cooking methods.

The Old French word bescuit is derived from the Latin words bis (twice) and coquere, coctus (to cook, cooked), and, hence, means "twice-cooked". This is because biscuits were originally cooked in a twofold process: first baked, and then dried out in a slow oven.