I'm so excited! Last night, I made the most light and fluffy, restaurant-quality, Southern-style biscuits from scratch that I've ever made in my life, and I just wanted to share the recipe...... not the biscuits- go make your own! 
Before I post the recipe, I just wanted to say a brief word about flour. There's a flour sold in the Southern region of US called White Lily flour, and most folks that use it swear you just can't make a good Southern-style biscuit without it. Well, no stores carry White Lily flour where I live in the southwest (too west to be considered south), so I had to make do with some creative flour mixing to come up with a fairly respectable facsimile. There are lots of bloggers that have come up with their own White Lily facsimile using various ratios of cake flour to all-purpose flour, and I read many of them before deciding on a ratio, that in theory, sounded to me like it could work quite well.....and it did!
Full disclosure- I've never used White Lily so I can't make a true comparison, but my biscuits came out so incredibly soft and fluffy and light- all the adjectives I normally hear used when folks describe biscuits made with White Lily flour- that I could hardly believe they came from my oven and not a Southern-style restaurant.
Without further ado, the recipe (makes 8 biscuits):
-170g Swans Down Cake Flour
-70g King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour + extra for dusting workspace
-12g (1 tbsp) double-acting baking powder
-3g (1/2 tsp) baking soda
-3g (1/2 tsp) sea salt
-56g (4 tbsp) cold, salted butter, cut into small diced pieces
-8oz/237 mL (1 cup) cold buttermilk (I used lowfat)
-1 tbsp heavy cream for brushing tops of biscuits before baking
- 28g (2 tbsp.) melted butter for brushing after baking
Start preheating oven to 500 degreesF and prepare a baking sheet by lining it with parchment paper.
While oven is preheating, sift together the 2 flours, the baking powder, baking soda and salt into a medium bowl, and briefly stir/whisk to evenly distribute.
Cut the cold butter into small diced pieces, toss them into the flour mixture, cover bowl and place in fridge. Measure out buttermilk and set aside in fridge.
When oven is up to temp, take the flour bowl out of the fridge and cut the butter into the flour with either a pastry cutter or your fingertips until it resembles the consistency of mostly cornmeal with a few peas interspersed throughout. (I used my fingertips...it's my favorite way to cut butter in).
Remove the buttermilk from the fridge and pour into the flour mixture. Stir with a spatula until just combined, then turn out onto a floured workspace. Dough will be quite sticky, so flour your hands well, too.
Lightly knead a few times until the dough just comes together into a cohesive but somewhat raggedy lump, then gently pat out to a 1/2” thick rectangle. It will be on the sticky side, but that’s okay. Better sticky than dry. Just flour your hands and the dough to help keep things from sticking too badly, but don’t go overboard. It should be soft, supple and slightly sticky, not bone dry. Fold the rectangle into 3rds, letter-style.
Give the dough quarter turn and pat out again into a 1/2” rectangle and fold again into 3rds.
Give the dough a quarter turn again, but this time gently pat it out into a 1” thick rectangle or circle, and with a floured 2.5” biscuit cutter, cut out biscuits by pushing straight down into dough. then back up. Do not twist the cutter.
Place the cut biscuits on the parchment-lined baking sheet close enough so that the sides are just touching each other (I was told this will help them rise better. I didn't know if that was true or not, but I did it anyway, and they rose perfectly fine).
Gently gather the remaining dough scraps into a 1” thick round or rectangle and cut out more. The last bit of dough will have to be hand-formed.
Brush tops with cream (making sure it doesn't dribble down the sides) then bake on middle rack @ 500F for 8 to 10 minutes, until lightly golden (mine took 10 minutes). Brush hot biscuits with melted butter, gently 'unstick' them from each other with 2 forks, remove them to a wire rack, and let rest 5 to 10 minutes before serving.
Split in half, spread with butter (and maybe some honey, too!) and devour!
IrishLass
Before I post the recipe, I just wanted to say a brief word about flour. There's a flour sold in the Southern region of US called White Lily flour, and most folks that use it swear you just can't make a good Southern-style biscuit without it. Well, no stores carry White Lily flour where I live in the southwest (too west to be considered south), so I had to make do with some creative flour mixing to come up with a fairly respectable facsimile. There are lots of bloggers that have come up with their own White Lily facsimile using various ratios of cake flour to all-purpose flour, and I read many of them before deciding on a ratio, that in theory, sounded to me like it could work quite well.....and it did!
Full disclosure- I've never used White Lily so I can't make a true comparison, but my biscuits came out so incredibly soft and fluffy and light- all the adjectives I normally hear used when folks describe biscuits made with White Lily flour- that I could hardly believe they came from my oven and not a Southern-style restaurant.
Without further ado, the recipe (makes 8 biscuits):
-170g Swans Down Cake Flour
-70g King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour + extra for dusting workspace
-12g (1 tbsp) double-acting baking powder
-3g (1/2 tsp) baking soda
-3g (1/2 tsp) sea salt
-56g (4 tbsp) cold, salted butter, cut into small diced pieces
-8oz/237 mL (1 cup) cold buttermilk (I used lowfat)
-1 tbsp heavy cream for brushing tops of biscuits before baking
- 28g (2 tbsp.) melted butter for brushing after baking
Start preheating oven to 500 degreesF and prepare a baking sheet by lining it with parchment paper.
While oven is preheating, sift together the 2 flours, the baking powder, baking soda and salt into a medium bowl, and briefly stir/whisk to evenly distribute.
Cut the cold butter into small diced pieces, toss them into the flour mixture, cover bowl and place in fridge. Measure out buttermilk and set aside in fridge.
When oven is up to temp, take the flour bowl out of the fridge and cut the butter into the flour with either a pastry cutter or your fingertips until it resembles the consistency of mostly cornmeal with a few peas interspersed throughout. (I used my fingertips...it's my favorite way to cut butter in).
Remove the buttermilk from the fridge and pour into the flour mixture. Stir with a spatula until just combined, then turn out onto a floured workspace. Dough will be quite sticky, so flour your hands well, too.
Lightly knead a few times until the dough just comes together into a cohesive but somewhat raggedy lump, then gently pat out to a 1/2” thick rectangle. It will be on the sticky side, but that’s okay. Better sticky than dry. Just flour your hands and the dough to help keep things from sticking too badly, but don’t go overboard. It should be soft, supple and slightly sticky, not bone dry. Fold the rectangle into 3rds, letter-style.
Give the dough quarter turn and pat out again into a 1/2” rectangle and fold again into 3rds.
Give the dough a quarter turn again, but this time gently pat it out into a 1” thick rectangle or circle, and with a floured 2.5” biscuit cutter, cut out biscuits by pushing straight down into dough. then back up. Do not twist the cutter.
Place the cut biscuits on the parchment-lined baking sheet close enough so that the sides are just touching each other (I was told this will help them rise better. I didn't know if that was true or not, but I did it anyway, and they rose perfectly fine).
Gently gather the remaining dough scraps into a 1” thick round or rectangle and cut out more. The last bit of dough will have to be hand-formed.
Brush tops with cream (making sure it doesn't dribble down the sides) then bake on middle rack @ 500F for 8 to 10 minutes, until lightly golden (mine took 10 minutes). Brush hot biscuits with melted butter, gently 'unstick' them from each other with 2 forks, remove them to a wire rack, and let rest 5 to 10 minutes before serving.
Split in half, spread with butter (and maybe some honey, too!) and devour!
IrishLass
