Ingredients

Dry

2 cups flour
1 tbsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp kosher salt

Wet

5 tbsp unsalted butter, cold
1 cup sour cream
- or ³⁄₄ cup buttermilk
- or 1 cup milk

Method

Prep

Preheat an oven to 400°F
Line a sheet pan with parchment paper

Make the dough

Whisk the dry ingredients together in a medium mixing bowl
Cut up the cold butter into cubes
Use your hands to pinch it into the flour until there are no big chunks
Add the buttermilk and mix with a silicone spatula
Transfer the dough to a floured work surface
Bring together and envelope fold the dough a few times to create layers

Shape and bake

Pat out to a ¹⁄₂″ thick, roughly rectangular shape
Cut out biscuit shapes (see notes)
Re-form the remaining dough and cut again
Transfer biscuits to the sheet and indent the middle with your thumb
Put sheet in the middle/top of the oven
Bake until the tops get a bit golden, usually 12–15 minutes

Notes

Using sour cream instead of milk makes these way softer and generally nicer in my opinion. I don’t keep milk around anymore anyway, but even if I did, I would use sour cream. Using cultured european style butter also makes these taste amazing.

If you don’t have sour cream or buttermilk, you can use regular milk and just don’t put in the baking soda, which is supposed to react with the more acidic ingredients.

For cutting equipment, I have a set of steel circle cutters and use whichever size works best for what I’m using the biscuits for. Before I got those, however, I just used a wide enough glass with a thin rim to cut them out. Square/Triangular biscuits cut out using a knife or bench scraper also work well.

If you cook bacon and biscuits at the same time for brunch, it works out better if the biscuits are above the bacon. To optimize you can have the bacon in the oven while it’s preheating.

Using a bench scraper makes cleanup way faster.