Buttery, soft, and made completely from scratch, this easy homemade biscuit recipe deserves a permanent place in your recipe repertoire. This recipe is made with all butter, no shortening!
With just 6 ingredients that I bet you already have on hand, these homemade biscuits are so simple to make and I’ve included plenty of tips (and a video!) to make sure you end up with perfect biscuits every single time.
Two reasons I’m super excited to share this homemade biscuit recipe with you today:
One: because homemade biscuits are delicious (obviously) and they’re so easy to make. So many people buy the canned version without realizing that they already have all of the ingredients to make them from scratch in their pantry.
The taste of a pre-made biscuit doesn’t hold a candle to a homemade biscuit. Not. even. close. Preservatives and artificial flavors, you aren’t welcome here.
Two: because ever since I started working on this biscuit recipe a few weeks ago, “Mind Your Own Biscuits” by Kacey Musgraves has been stuck in my head and I’ve been singing it off-key relentlessly.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Kacey Musgraves and her music, but every time I start singing my dog starts actually crying. It’s sad and hilarious, and if I wasn’t so embarrassed by my terrible singing voice I would have shared a video of it by now. Hopefully, by publishing this recipe I’ll release myself from the endless refrain and the animal abuse will finally stop.
But let’s talk more about the first reason.
Homemade biscuits call for just six ingredients: all-purpose flour, baking powder, sugar, salt, butter, and milk. And then more butter once they’re finished baking because of course we need more butter.
I mentioned that these biscuits are easy so do not be alarmed by all the tips that I have for you below. These biscuits are easy, but technique matters and I want to arm you with all the information that you need so that you can make these easily and have them come out perfectly the very first time.
The tips are simple but important, and while some more seasoned bakers already know them, I want to give everyone an even playing field.
Tips for Making Homemade Biscuits
- The butter and milk for this recipe need to be as cold as possible for fluffy and soft biscuits. I freeze my butter before using it and recommend keeping the milk in the refrigerator right up until it’s time to add it to the dry ingredients.
- Don’t overwork the dough! Keep in mind that you want your butter to stay as cold as possible when making these biscuits, and the more you have your hands on the dough the softer the butter will become. Definitely don’t use an electric mixer for this recipe.
- We’re going to do a little bit of laminating. This means folding the dough over itself multiple times (5-6 times here) to encourage flaky layers in our biscuits. You can watch the video below to see exactly how this is done.
- Don’t use a rolling pin, use your hands to gently work the dough into a flat rectangle before cutting out your biscuits.
- Don’t be afraid to add flour to the dough if it’s too sticky while you are handling it (and make sure to work on a lightly floured surface).
Visual clue: If you look at the pre-baked biscuit below, you’ll see that you can actually see the butter pieces in the dough. This is what you want, the ingredients won’t be well-combined like with a cookie dough and seeing bits of butter means you’ve actually done everything right here. Hooray!
A Few Notes on Butter in Homemade Biscuits
The butter is possibly the most important part of this recipe, and the way you handle it can make or break your homemade biscuits.
While you can certainly use a pastry cutter to cut your butter into the dry ingredients, I recommend freezing your butter for about 30 minutes before beginning. Then, use a box grater to grate the butter before combining this in with your dry ingredients.
I use this technique in my scone recipes and highly recommend it with these biscuits, too. Not only is it much easier than using a pastry cutter, but it does a great job of finely shredding and distributing the butter throughout the mixture without overworking the butter (remember, you want to manage the butter as little as possible so that it’s as cold as possible when going into the oven).
Alternatively you could also use a food processor (like I do with my pie crust recipe), but it’s just so easy to grate in the butter that I always use this method instead.
And yes, I do recommend using unsalted butter in this recipe and then adding salt. If you want to know more about why I write my recipes this way, you can read all about it (and an easy substitution if you only have salted butter on hand) in this post that I wrote about salted vs unsalted butter.
I know I’ve mentioned to you guys a few times that I’ve been working on a baking contest/challenge/I’m really not sure what to call it, but I’m planning a post where I encourage all of you to bake along with me. The goal is to get people baking recipes they may have not tried before, and I’m encouraging everyone to share their results for a chance to win a small prize.
Well, today’s homemade biscuit recipe is essentially the base for the baking challenge that I’ll be sharing in exactly one week, so take this as a hint that making today’s recipe is a great way to get a jump start for the challenge!
To make sure you’re among the first to be notified of all new recipes and baking challenges, make sure you’re subscribed to my e-mail list. It’s free, and you get a free e-book of 8 of my favorite cookie recipes.
Enjoy!
How to Make Homemade Biscuits
I know I talked a lot in this video, but I really feel that the tips are so important, and will help ensure your biscuits come out perfectly!
Homemade Biscuits
Ingredients
- 2 cups all-purpose flour (250g)
- 1 Tablespoon baking powder
- 1 Tablespoon granulated sugar
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 6 Tablespoons unsalted butter very cold (85g), unsalted European butter is ideal, but not required
- ¾ cup whole milk¹ (177ml) buttermilk or 2% milk will also work
Recommended Equipment
- Biscuit cutter
Instructions
- For best results, chill your butter in the freezer for 10-20 minutes before beginning this recipe. It's ideal that the butter is very cold for light, flaky, buttery biscuits.
- Preheat oven to 425F and line a cookie sheet with nonstick parchment paper. Set aside.
- Combine flour, baking powder, sugar, and salt in a large bowl and mix well. Set aside.
- Remove your butter from the refrigerator and either cut it into your flour mixture using a pastry cutter or (preferred) use a box grater to shred the butter into small pieces and then add to the flour mixture and stir.
- Cut the butter or combine the grated butter until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs.
- Add milk, use a wooden spoon or spatula to stir until combined (don't over-work the dough).
- Transfer your biscuit dough to a well-floured surface and use your hands to gently work the dough together. If the dough is too sticky, add flour until it is manageable.
- Once the dough is cohesive, fold in half over itself and use your hands to gently flatten layers together. Rotate the dough 90 degrees and fold in half again, repeating this step 5-6 times but taking care to not overwork the dough.
- Use your hands (do not use a rolling pin) to flatten the dough to 1" thick and lightly dust a 2 ¾" round biscuit cutter with flour.
- Making close cuts, press the biscuit cutter straight down into the dough and drop the biscuit onto your prepared baking sheet.
- Repeat until you have gotten as many biscuits as possible and place less than ½" apart on baking sheet.
- Once you have gotten as many biscuits as possible out of the dough, gently re-work the dough to get out another biscuit or two until you have at least 6 biscuits.
- Bake on 425F for 12 minutes or until tops are beginning to just turn lightly golden brown.
- If desired, brush with melted salted butter immediately after removing from oven. Serve warm and enjoy.
Notes
Nutrition
Nutritional information is based on third-party calculations and should be considered an estimate only. Actual nutritional content will vary based upon brands used, measuring methods, cooking method, portion sizes, and more.
Penny likes to supervise the photography process. Fortunately, this setup got her vote of approval.
Gal Jerman
Top ,.. top top … post! Keep the good work on !
Jessica
This has been my go-to biscuit recipe for a few years now! I love how quickly and easily it comes together. (A note for people who need to make GF/DF substitutions: I’ve made them with many different dairy free milks and butters, and have even made them with GF flour and they turn out great! Though the GF flour tends to not produce a very tall biscuit. They still taste great and are super flaky.)
I know fresh is best but I am wondering if they freeze well, I’d love to put some away for later!
Hope
I made these last night for a work function today. Of course I had to ‘sample’ each batch for quality assurance purposes. Excellent flavor. I used Kerrygold butter, King Arthur flour and used slightly less baking powder (2 tsp vs 1 Tlbs). They came out wonderful.
Now I ended up with a stomachache because I ate too many biscuits before bed, but that certainly wasn’t a recipe problem. Ha!
Hope
Oh and I also used salted butter and cut the salt by half. I almost never use unsalted butter, but that’s purely a personal preference to me.
Antonella
How can these be reheated without drying them out? 🙂 Thanks!
Emily @ Sugar Spun Run
A microwave should do the trick 😊
Bea
I’ve made these four times in 2 weeks lol. These are soo good that they barely make it out of the oven before my family devours them! I was just wondering (newish baker here) can I make and shape them and then cook them the next morning? What would you recommend?
Sam
Hi Bea! You can make them ahead of time. I would just store them in the refrigerator in an air tight container. 🙂
Peter
It always amazes me that people think unsalted butter is preferable to salted butter. To me, unsalted butter tastes insipid, like lard with a tiny, that’s very tiny, bit of extra flavor. But do what you want and I’ll do what I want, which is never use unsalted butter for anything.
Emily @ Sugar Spun Run
Hi Peter! We have a post about why we use unsalted vs salted butter in our recipes if you’re interested in reading that. To put it briefly though, the main reason we use unsalted butter is to control the salt in our final product. The amount of salt in salted butter can vary from brand to brand, and if we recommended using salted butter, our recipes would have inconsistent results for each baker. We simply add the salt in ourselves instead of relying on our butter to do to it for us. Hope that helps!
D
This RECIOE is incredible. The COLD butter is key!
Emily @ Sugar Spun Run
You’re absolutely right, D! Thanks for trying our recipe ❤️
Diana
For folks with allergies, soy milk works just as well as other milks for this recipe. I was pleasantly surprised about how well they turned out. Would recommend!
Bethany
Just made these biscuits for a biscuits & gravy breakfast, and it’s delicious. I doubled the recipe to make more biscuits, and used 2% milk (what I had on hand). It worked perfectly!
Ellery Collier
I used this recipe to make biscuits and gravy and it’s super great. The biscuits were super delicious
Rosa
Perfect biscuits every time!
Jennifer
Amazing biscuits! My husband said they were the best he’s ever had. Thank you for sharing.
Julie Craig
Few of us can’t do milk so I was wondering if I could use almond milk? I’d like to make these tonight 💕
Emily @ Sugar Spun Run
Hi Julie! Others have used almond milk with success, so you should be fine 😊
Julie Craig
Ok great! I will try it 💕
Stephanie
The most DELICIOUS biscuits! This recipe was easy to follow, and quick to make.
Linda
Delicious. I would like to know what happens if you use salted butter? Thank you. Linda
Sam
Hi Linda! You can just cut the added salt by 1/4 teaspoon. 🙂
Jenny
I added a bit of cream of tartar (less than half a teaspoon). These were amazing! I didn’t taste any bitterness from the baking powder. Wish I could add a picture to my review, they looked glorious and tasted as good as they looked!
Emily @ Sugar Spun Run
We’re glad you liked them, Jenny! If you’d like to share a picture with us, you can always tag us on Instagram @sugarspun_sam or share in our Facebook group 😊
Brittany
In my opinion a table spoon of baking powder was WAY too much and left an acidic taste in the biscuits. If you cut that amount in half they would be perfect! Still would absolutely recommend this recipe.
Sam
Glad you enjoyed overall, Brittany! If there’s an acidic taste this is more likely a matter of baking powder that’s been exposed to moisture and has clumped (sometimes generic baking powder does this, even if it’s brand new).
mel telles
can you use self rising flour . thank you mel telles i,m 80 y. o.
Sam
Hi Mel! I don’t recommend self rising flour here. 🙁