Gemma's ultimate recipe for delicious buttermilk biscuits

Hi Bold Bakers! Biscuits mean different things in different countries. Like in Ireland, a biscuit is a very dry cookie that you would have with a cup of tea. However, in America, a biscuit is kind of an amazing buttery quick bread, very similar to a savory scone. In my opinion, no matter where you're from in the world, everybody should experience biscuits. That's why I'm sharing with you my best ever biscuit recipe. As always, the recipe can be found on BiggerBolderBaking.com along with all of my other recipes. Okay let's get started in a nice big bowl. Add in your flour, baking powder, and of course salt. Then just whisk your dry ingredients together. So like I said, biscuits are a buttery dough so we have our butter here but listen to this, it is rock solid. I've had it in the freezer for a few hours and this is my secret tip. I have a box grater here and I'm going to grate the butter into our dry ingredients. And what this will do is give us tiny little lumps of butter all the way throughout our dough which will create those beautiful layers. So just go ahead and grate it in. Now you will notice that I've got a pound of butter here, and you only need half a pound for this recipe, but here's another great tip. Roll down the paper to protect your fingers, and just grate half of the block of butter. Give yourself a little bit of extra space so you don't hurt your fingers. A lot of you have already seen me do this trick before on Bigger Bolder Baking when I make breads and pastries, and it just yields you a really fluffy dough. Okay so that's roughly half a pound, now I'm just gonna tap the butter out of my grater, and then with a spatula, just mix it into your flour. So you have lovely little lumps of butter all the way throughout. So our next key ingredient is we're gonna add in our buttermilk. And then go in with your clean hand and then mix it up until it forms a dough. So buttermilk is a key ingredient when it comes to biscuits and I'll tell you why. It actually has acid in the buttermilk and it tenderizes the flour and that's what gives you these really lovely soft fluffy biscuits. So this dough is a dry dough but you don't want it too dry so if you need to add in a little bit more buttermilk that's totally fine. You want it to loosely come together. Just like this. Perfect. Now I'm gonna turn this out onto my floured surface. So now this is the point where we create all those lovely layers that biscuits have, and I'm gonna show you how to do that. Pat your dough out into a rectangle, roughly around 6 inches by 9 inches. Don't worry if you're a little bit over or under, it's totally grand. Now, here's the layers. What we're going to do is fold this piece of dough like a piece of paper, like you would a letter. So kind of fold it in thirds, and then fold it over on itself. As you can see we're creating those layers. And then just pat it out again to roughly 6 inches by 9 inches. You'll still see that it's lovely and thick, but we have those layers built in now. So now let's talk dough cutter. Here I have a nice 3 inch dough cutter, I love these, I'm gonna put a link on my website, they're GoodCook SweetCreation and they come in a nest so you get a whole pile of them different sizes. Now all you want to do is just go straight down into your dough, and then pull it out. Now here is the tip about cutting out biscuits, you probably didn't even know there was a tip about cutting out biscuits. You don't go down and you turn, because that will give you a knobbly biscuit that will lean like this. You want a nice big straight one, so go down and come straight back out again, and it's gonna make a huge difference to your biscuits. So with any bit of leftover dough, just cut out two more biscuits. So there you go, you're going to get eight very big generous sized biscuits. Now we're just gonna pop these guys onto our baking tray. These guys are gonna puff up really lovely so give them a little bit of space in between. Okay so we want to get that lovely golden brown finish on the outside, so I'm just gonna do a little bit of egg wash. Now there's also a trick when it comes to egg wash, I know it sounds kind of crazy but hear me out. When you're egg washing something just do the very top, don't let the egg wash run down the side and I'll tell you why, I learned this in college years ago and it has been proven over and over again. If it runs down the side it's going to pull down your biscuit and it's going to be lopsided. So just do the very top and then move on to the next one. We don't want lopsided biscuits here. Okay gorgeous. Now all that's left to do is put these guys into the oven. Bake your biscuits off at 375°F or 190°C for roughly 25-30 minutes or until a beautiful golden brown. So let me tell you the reasoning behind grating in the frozen butter. When you get those lovely little lumps of butter, they're going to be all the way throughout your dough. When you pop it into a hot oven, that butter will evaporate, evaporation will mean your dough will rise and it will give you all those lovely layers all the way throughout. So it's a bit technical, kind of geeky, but it's really interesting how it works and then when you come out of the oven and you see all those layers, you know why. I could not be happier with how these guys came out, they look amazing, they're beautiful golden brown on top. So now come here to me, I want to show you all the layers that we created, you see that? That's from the frozen butter, this means we've got a lovely flaky biscuit. So now biscuits are definitely best eaten straight from the oven so I'm not gonna waste any time, I'm gonna cut one in half, spread on a little bit of butter, honey butter also works really well, and then have a little taste, oh my gosh. They're buttery, they're fluffy on the inside, they're flaky, they're so tender, Without a doubt this is one of my favorite things since moving to the United States. Gravy and biscuits, hands down every time I see it in a restaurant I order it. There's something so special about these little guys. So now you can rest easy knowing that you've got the best ever biscuit recipe to share with your friends and family. I hope you enjoyed this episode and I'll see you back here really soon for more Bigger Bolder Baking.