Sourdough Drop Biscuits Recipe (2024)

FAQs

What is the secret to an excellent biscuit? ›

The secret to the best biscuits is using very cold butter and baking powder. We've made a lot of biscuits, but this easy biscuits recipe is the one we turn to the most (they are so fluffy!).

If your biscuits are falling apart…

If this sounds familiar, you could be adding too much flour to your dough without knowing it, disrupting the ratio of dry to wet ingredients.

Drop biscuits have more milk or other liquid added to the dough than rolled biscuits. The dough is moister and cannot be kneaded or rolled; simply drop tablespoons of dough onto the baking sheet. Drop biscuits don't rise as much as other biscuits and they are always coarser in appearance and texture.

Cake flour will give you a lighter, fluffier biscuit, but the outer crust won't have as much bite to it. Conversely, all-purpose flour will provide more bite, but it'll be a drier, less airy biscuit. The solution: Use half cake flour and half all-purpose flour.

As it turns out, adding hard-boiled egg yolks to your biscuit dough is a way to ward off an overworked, tough dough that can be the downfall of a butter-based pastry. When the trick is employed, the pastry shatters and then dissolves in your mouth quickly, tasting like a knob of flaky butter.

Cover the dough loosely with a kitchen towel and allow it to rest for 30 minutes. Gently pat out the dough some more, so that the rectangle is roughly 10 inches by 6 inches. Cut dough into biscuits using a floured biscuit cutter (or even a glass, though its duller edge may result in slightly less tall biscuits).

Keep the oven hot.

When baking buttery treats like biscuits, the key is to bake them at a temperature where the water in the butter turns quickly to steam. This steam is a big part of how the biscuits achieve their height, as it evaporates up and out.

It's an appropriate name because they can be made in a hurry, as the dough is dropped from the spoon onto the pan, rather than rolled or cut. Drop biscuits have more liquid in relation to fat and flour, making a dough that's too wet to be kneaded.

As the comments poured in, a clear result emerged, with three biscuits standing out as the most detested by the British public: Fig Rolls, Pink Wafers, and Rich Tea. Fig Rolls were criticised for their unusual texture and taste, with many users finding the combination unappealing.

What is a whisker biscuit? ›

A Whisker Biscuit is a patented arrow rest with synthetic bristles and a hole in the centre, to completely encircle and hold the arrow shaft in perfect alignment and allows feathers or vanes to pass easily through, so there is no fletch clearance problem.

The butter version rises the highest — look at those flaky layers! The shortening biscuit is slightly shorter and a bit drier, too. Butter contains a bit of water, which helps create steam and gives baked goods a boost.

Taste-testing results:

Three of five thought the water biscuits were fluffier and better overall. Two of five thought the milk biscuits had a little better taste.

Heavy Cream.

The heavy cream adds flavor to the biscuit by adding a little more fat and helps hydrate the dough. The extra fat in the heavy cream is helpful because buttermilk in stores is often “low-fat” buttermilk.

For an extra layer of safety, punch out your biscuits onto a baking sheet, then refrigerate the entire sheet for 10 to 15 minutes before transferring to the oven. By nature, biscuits are a quickbread, which benefit from as little gluten development as possible.

Use good butter and dairy

Because biscuit recipes call for so few ingredients, it's important that every one is high quality—you'll really taste the difference. Catherine recommends splurging a bit on a grass-fed butter or European-style butter (now's the time to reach for Kerrygold!).

The two keys to success in making the best biscuits are handling the dough as little as possible as well as using very cold solid fat (butter, shortening, or lard) and cold liquid. When the biscuits hit the oven, the cold liquid will start to evaporate creating steam which will help our biscuits get very tall.

The process simply involves using a pastry brush to lightly coat the top of your unbaked biscuits with a liquid ingredient known to create that browning effect once heated. One of the most popular choices for this is cream, which imparts a rich golden color to the crust.

While biscuits receive some leavening power from chemical sources — baking powder and baking soda — the difference between serviceable and greatness comes from the extra rise that steam provides. In order to generate steam, the oven must be set at a minimum of 425 degrees for at least 10 minutes prior to baking.