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.2 cups all-purpose flour, 1 Tablespoon baking powder, 1 Tablespoon granulated sugar, 1 teaspoon salt
- 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.6 Tablespoons unsalted butter
- 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).¾ cup whole milk¹
- 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.
Ashleigh Stickler
Love making these easy easy biscuits that turn out really good everytime!
Meredith King
Came out perfect! The video helped a great deal.
Emily @ Sugar Spun Run
We are so happy it was helpful, Meredith! Enjoy 🩷
denise lowe
Excellent!! Family loves!!
Experimental baker
Taste great for some honey butter biscuits! put some cinnamon in leftover dough to bake with them taste great
Casey @ Sugar Spun Run
That sounds delicious! So glad you loved them!
Danielle A
This recipe produced a soft, flaky layered biscuit that rose and browned very nicely. I’d say the taste was sweeter than I’d like because I prefer a versatile biscuit that could be eaten with a sweet or savory breakfast. I think I’d half the sugar next time.
A Mitch
Perfection!
I think the nutritional information may be off, 280 kcal= 280,000 calories… am I reading this completely wrong? Just curious!
Casey @ Sugar Spun Run
So glad you loved them! That would be a lot of calories!😄 You are correct that 1 kcal does equal 1000 small calories. 1000 small calories equals 1 large Calorie (with a capital “C”), but small calories are such a small unit of measurement (used primarily in physics) that the food/nutrition industry has adopted large Calories as their unit of measurement. So typically, Calories are referring to large Calories (unless you’re in a physics lab!) and a kcal is what you’re thinking of as just a typical Calorie.🙂
Sammie
Well, they rose beautifully they weren’t as buttery and flavorful. They were also a little dry. I follow instructions exactly except I used buttermilk.
Sam
Hi Sammie! This sounds like a case of the biscuits being baked just a tad bit too long or too much flour being accidentally used. I’d make sure to stir, scoop, and level your flour (or use a kitchen scale) and maybe just check them a couple minutes earlier next time. I think you’ll be quite happy with the results if you do! 🙂
Laura
This is a real good recipe, I use 1/2 shortening and 1/2 butter. They were really good
Casey @ Sugar Spun Run
We’re so glad you enjoyed them, Laura! Thanks for sharing!
Inde
I made these biscuits along with sausage gravy and it was so good! I used margarine and milk only because I did not have real butter but oh goodness this is now my go to recipe for biscuits!
Jocelyn Mayo
I made these once before and my husband loves them. I plan to make these again.
If I want to freeze the biscuits should I bake then freeze or freeze the dough?
Sam
Hi Jocelyn! You can freeze these baked or un-baked. Personally I would cut the biscuits out then wrap individually and freeze. You can bake them from frozen adding a minute or two to the bake time. 🙂
Amber Decker
What to do if I have no parchment paper?
Emily @ Sugar Spun Run
Hi Amber! You can bake them directly on a baking sheet 🙂
Cynthia
I hv attempted using the box cutter 2x and my butter was frozen for days. It wasted butter and could not get most butter out of the grater. maybe my grater not sharp enough but I use for cheese just fine. So I use pastry cutter My dough looks alot dryer than hers, so hard not to work too much as cant gather it. I have made 6 batches. Easy for sure, each batch different outcome as keep trying all recommendations, whereas in Beginning I just made recipe & used my common sense. I hv yet to get the real flakey texture but wont gv up. In trying master not overworked dough I watched video but unfortunately the mixing of milk was skipped thru..
Sam
I wouldn’t freeze the butter that long, it will be difficult to work with. Are you weighing your flour? You may have a touch too much flour if the dough doesn’t come together.
Ellis
love
Jackie
This is a beautiful recipe. I did something wrong. After 12 minutes mine were lovely and fluffy both nit quite done. Had to cook them longer. Any ideas? Did I make them too thick?
Casey @ Sugar Spun Run
Hi Jackie! They could have been too thick, you want the biscuits to be 1″ before baking. There’s also a chance your oven temperature could be off, we recommend using an oven thermometer to make sure it’s correct. So glad you love the recipe!🙂
Candace
I made some for my family for breakfast and they loved them. I will definitely be making more.
Emily @ Sugar Spun Run
We are so happy they were a hit, Candace!
Lyndi
I’ve been making these for a while now, they’re delicious my favorite biscuit recipe.
I use whole milk usually and have also used heavy cream and 2% and they’ve turned out just as good.
They also work with whole wheat flour if you add some extra liquid. (1 cup whole wheat flour + 1 cup all purpose and add an extra 1/4 cup milk).
Jaida
I make these all the time now!!! They are SO SO SOOOOO GOOD with some fresh raspberry jam.
Ashley
Honestly I was slightly skeptical how these would turn out. They are DELICIOUS! I grated my butter fresh from the fridge onto a little plate and then set it in the freezer for 10 minutes while I prepped everything else. It made the process super duper easy. I will be making these weekly.