These Self-Rising Biscuits are light and delicious. Still totally homemade, we get a little insurance with self-rising flour. Make things a little easier on yourself in the morning.
I've struggled with biscuit making over the years. My mom didn't make biscuits from scratch. Consequently, I still have a secret love of canned biscuits. I can eat a whole batch in one go with honey or blackberry jam. It's possible that I had grandmothers who made proper biscuits, but they were likely using Bisquik without a shred of shame. I can't really tell you because I had no interest in learning how to cook back then.
My interest in eating biscuits has been omnipresent. I can remember one trip to Hawaii with my family as a child. My dad took us to the same place for breakfast what seemed like every other day because he said they had the best biscuits on the island. Biscuits made an appearance at all times of day in our household. They were a cornerstone of my love affair with carbs.
Now I live in a place that thinks an Oreo is a biscuit, so I have had to learn how to make them the old-fashioned way. But if you don't have anyone to teach you, they can be tricky. If the dough is too wet, you have a sticky mess. if it's too try, you have hockey pucks. I think I'm finally starting to get the hang of it.
I've adopted this recipe for Self-Rising Biscuits from that quintessential down home cook, The Pioneer Woman, Ree Drummond. She should know how to make a biscuit, and she didn't let me down. I like that I get to skip a few steps by not having to measure out any rising agents. You don't have to worry about mixing up the baking soda and the baking powder (yes, I've done that many times), and self-rising flour is usually a bit lighter than all-purpose flour, so you get a lighter biscuit.
I basically always have buttermilk in my fridge because it keeps for ages. You can use lard, shortening, or butter for these biscuits, so just go with whatever you have on hand. And don't worry if you don't have a pastry cutter. I think your clean hands are your best tool for mixing up this dough. One last tip, push the cutter straight down into the dough. If you twist it a bunch, the biscuits won't rise as high.
Quite apart from just diving into these with butter and jam, these are also the biscuits I recently used for this Sausage Egg and Cheese Biscuit with Apple Butter. They were perfection.
There's never a bad time to eat a biscuit, so you need these Self-Rising Biscuits in your life. You can totally do this. I believe in you.
Self-Rising Biscuits
10 biscuits
20 minutes
10 minutes
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Ingredients
2 cups self-rising flour
½ teaspoon salt (if using salted butter, cut back on the added salt a little bit)
2 ounces cold butter (or lard or shortening or a combination) cut into cubes
200 ml buttermilk
Directions
- Preheat your oven to 475 F (250 C) and line your baking sheet with parchment or a silicone mat.
- Add your self-rising flour and salt to a large mixing bowl and give this a gentle stir to combine. Drop in your butter or other fat, and use your fingers to press the butter and flour together. It's a sort of rubbing or smearing motion. Keep breaking up the butter and pressing it into the flour until you have pea-size chunks of butter or smaller throughout.
- Next, add your buttermilk to the mixture. Use a wooden spoon or a rubber spatula to stir the buttermilk into the mixture. Once it starts to come together, turn your dough out onto a lightly floured surface and give it a few light kneads to bring everything together. The less you can work your dough, the lighter your biscuits will be.
- Roll or pat out your dough to about ½ inch thickness, then use a biscuit cutter, I like two inches, to cut our as many biscuits as you can. You can re-roll the scraps, but the biscuits from the first round are always the best, so be efficient.
- Place your biscuits a couple of inches apart on a baking sheet and bake for about 10 minutes or until they just go golden on the top. Allow them to cool just long enough so that they won't burn you before digging in.
Recipe adapted from The Pioneer Woman.
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