The Best Sourdough Biscuits

Today we are making my delicious sourdough biscuits. We're using simple ingredients, a little sourdough discard, and one key ingredient, cold butter, in order to create those soft pull apart layers every single time. These biscuits are buttery, tender, and just slightly tangy, making them perfect for breakfast, dinner, or anything in between. These are the flakiest sourdough biscuits and they come together so fast. So grab your sourdough starter and let's get started. For these sourdough biscuits you're going to need all-purpose flour, sourdough discard, buttermilk, baking soda, baking powder, salt, sugar, and unsalted butter. First off let's start whisking together our dry ingredients. First we're going to need 280 grams or two cups of all-purpose flour. Then we're going to add eight grams or two teaspoons of baking powder, three grams or half a teaspoon of baking soda, for just a touch of sweetness four grams or one teaspoon of sugar, and for a bit of contrast six grams or one teaspoon of salt. Give that a little whisk until everything is combined. Perfect. Let's set this to the side. Now for the key ingredient, cold or frozen butter. Cold or frozen butter is crucial for this recipe because it is what creates those flaky layers in our sourdough biscuits. When we pop them into the oven it's going to melt, which will release some steam, creating all those layers. But it's really important that it's nice and cold because if it's not and your butter melts while you're working with it, that's how you end up with dense biscuits and nobody wants that. I like to stick on the side of caution so I'm using frozen butter today. And you're going to need a box grater. So with that we're just going to grate our butter. Using a box grater is another great tip so you don't have to cut your butter into the dry ingredients. So much easier to work with. Now let's add that to our dry ingredients. Give it a little tap tap. To the dry ingredients we added 113 grams or half a cup of frozen unsalted butter. Now with clean hands let's just mix that together until the butter is coated lightly with the flour. And the butter should break up into pea-sized pieces. Perfect. Last but not least, let's mix together our wet ingredients. You can use active sourdough starter for this recipe. Just be sure to use the same amount of grams. But I would highly recommend using cold sourdough discard because again using cold buttermilk and cold sourdough discard keeps that butter from melting so you get all those beautiful flaky layers. To my liquid measuring cup I have 200 grams or 2 3rd cups of cold sourdough discard. And now let's add 120 grams or half a cup of cold buttermilk. Give that a whisk until everything is smooth. If you don't have buttermilk, half and half is a great substitution. Perfect. Now we're going to pour our wet ingredients into our butter flour mixture. Like that. Don't want to leave any behind. And using a rubber spatula let's mix it until mostly everything is combined. You'll notice that not all the flour is mixed in. Totally good. Everything will come together as we roll out and shape our biscuits. We're going to lightly flour our work surface and pour our biscuit dough on top. With our hands let's gently work the dough back together. We want to work quickly because we don't want the butter to melt. Now with a floured rolling pin we're just going to roll the dough to about 9 inches to 11 inches. Doesn't have to be exact. But again we're just bringing that dough together. I like to use a bench scraper for this next bit instead of our warm hands. Another trick to help prevent the butter from melting. We're going to use the bench scraper and we're going to fold the dough over itself. Like that. And again over here. And then roll it out again with that floured rolling pin. All of this folding and rolling is again just helping you create all of those buttery flaky layers. Let's do it again. Fold it on top of one another. And all this loose stuff I kind of just like to tuck in here. Perfect. And if you notice your biscuit dough starting to stick to your work surface just give it a nice little dusting again. All right one last time. Now we're going to roll the dough to be about a half an inch tall. Right on the money. Now at this point you could just cut your biscuits into eight even squares. But if you're going for a more traditional cut then I love this biscuit cutter. This is two and three fourths inches. We're going to dip this in some flour and then we're going to shape our biscuit dough. I like to try to keep it as close to the edge and close to one another. But crucial step here when you're shaping your biscuit you just want to go straight down and straight up. No twisting and turning because when you do that you're going to close the sides and that prevents your biscuits from rising. So just straight down and straight up. You push out your biscuit and you get just like that. Already see those beautiful layers. Then we're going to repeat until we have about six to eight biscuits. If you love sourdough recipes like this one be sure to like and subscribe and don't forget to click the notification bell. That way you know whenever a new video is posted. For the last two biscuits I'm going to re-roll the scraps. This one might not be the prettiest one but we're not wasting anything over here. We're going to line our baking sheet with some parchment paper and we're going to take our biscuits and place them about a half an inch apart. We want to bake them somewhat close together because this helps them get nice and tall. Now to ensure that the butter stays nice and cold before we pop it in a nice hot oven we are going to cover these biscuits and place them into the freezer for at least 20 minutes. I absolutely love this plastic cover. It fits my baking sheet perfectly and it saves me from using extra plastic wrap or foil. It's a must-have in my kitchen. So again pop these into the freezer for at least 20 minutes. If you prefer to long ferment these sourdough biscuits keep them in the fridge overnight until you're ready to bake. After the biscuits have chilled we're going to pop them into the oven at 425 and bake for 17 to 20 minutes or until the biscuits are nice and golden brown. And just like that perfectly soft buttery flaky sourdough biscuits made right at home. You can keep them simple and serve them warm with a little butter and jam or turn them into something more filling like breakfast sandwiches or classic biscuits and sausage gravy. They're also so easy to customize. Try adding fresh herbs shredded cheese or even a little garlic for a savory twist. Once you make these from scratch it's hard to go back to anything else. I hope you love these sourdough biscuits. If there's another sourdough recipe that you'd like to see be sure to let me know in the comments and don't forget to like and subscribe. I'll see you in the next one. Bye!