Forget biscuits in a can loaded with trans fats. These homemade biscuits are easy to make and can even be made gluten free! They pair beautifully with homemade soups and stews like this cream of potato soup.
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Healthy Homemade Biscuits
Homemade Biscuit Recipe
- Cook Time: 15 mins
- Total Time: 15 mins
Ingredients
- 2 c. flour (can use 1/2 whole wheat flour, 100% whole wheat pastry flour or gluten-free flour blend)
- 3 tsp. baking powder
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/4 c. butter or coconut oil (use the code STEWARDSHIP for 10% off at that site!) or lard
- 3/4–1 c. milk or buttermilk or yogurt
Instructions
- Mix dry ingredients. Cut fat into mixture using a pastry blender or 2 knives. Fork in the milk. Only stir enough to get the dough uniform! Roll out and cut with a glass dipped in flour (or you can make rounds by hand), approximately 1 inch thick.
- Bake at 425 degrees on ungreased baking sheet or stone for 13-15 minutes (parchment paper works great).
Notes
Gluten-free: Use the same directions and proportions but with a gluten-free flour blend. It works! The only one I’ve tested is my homemade blend, found here.
Soaked: Cut fat into flour and mix with cultured buttermilk or yogurt. Leave on counter overnight, then sprinkle the baking powder and salt (Use the code kitchenstewardship for 15% off of your first purchase) over the top and fold in as thoroughly as possible yet with as few strokes as possible. The key to flaky biscuits is less handling.
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Tonight’s dinner experiment:
I fiddled with this recipe for quite a while, trying to find out what fats would work (that aren’t shortening) and if I can soak biscuits. I soaked them first just by making the dough with yogurt and leaving it overnight, but then I read that salt inhibits the breakdown of phytic acid. Since I didn’t want to inhibit the inhibitors being broken down…right…I had to try mixing the baking powder and salt after the soak. Tonight was the first try.
I made one batch of biscuits with yogurt, soaked overnight. The second batch used buttermilk (leftover from making butter, not cultured buttermilk), even though I should have just used yogurt again for a “real” test. Nonetheless, the soaked biscuits only turned out okay. They are much denser and smoother on top, less flaky and biscuit-y. Both batches were made with half whole wheat pastry flour and half white flour (I was almost out of pastry flour!) and lard.
Soaked on the left, standard recipe on the right:
It’s hard to see here, but the soaked dough is much more smooth and elastic, the standard dough more…for lack of a better word, puffy.
Here’s how they came out. The soaked biscuits (left) actually needed a few extra minutes to bake because they were so dense, but this was after just 12 minutes. The soaked biscuits didn’t get any darker after the extra minutes. (I don’t make very nice circles, do I?)
Now I need to make in-a-day biscuits with yogurt to effect a valid test. I’ve used yogurt before, though, with good results, just not with whole wheat pastry flour.
Final verdict: Both biscuits are good, and better than, say, Grands. But the unsoaked ones are delicious!
You might also like:
- Homemade Whole Wheat SOFT Tortillas and Other Healthy Tortillas
- Soaking Grains: An Exploration
- Name That Grain! (What are all Those Kinds of Wheat For???)
- Seeking The Perfect Homemade Whole Wheat Bread
- Squash Gluten-Free Biscuit Recipe
Don’t forget to include your kids in the baking! Homemade biscuit making is an awesome skill for kids to learn.
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I have the same recipe that calls for sour cream instead of buttermilk. It is easy and biscuits turn out soft and flaky. For the coconut oil…..measure it out in liquid form and put into the refrigerator. When solid, cut into your flour mixture; same as you would the butter.
So good! Make this pretty much every time we have soup. Like tonight, nothing like potato soup and yummy home made biscuits… I am trying to sift the dry ingredients see if it makes the biscuits any lighter wish me luck!
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I love this recipe. We eat them with apple butter, by themselves with butter, we make egg mcmuffin sandwiches with them, and tonight I used this recipe to make monkey bread which was delicious.
I wonder how these would be if you frozen the dough and popped out a couple at a time to cook. kinda like those frozen Pillsbury biscuits
Amanda,
I’m guessing that would work but have never tried it…I usually freeze already baked biscuits. If you try it, let us know please! 🙂 Katie
Katie, I have made several biscuit recipes with baking powder where they were very very bitter. I decided to give yours a try since nothing I have made of yours has turned out poorly. I did sift the dry ingredients and I think that made a huge difference in how wonderful they turned out. (My old recipe calls for sifting so I am used to that and just got my sifter out to sift like normal.) They were absolutely wonderful!! Used real butter and kefir for the milk. YUM!! Thanks again for another winner!!
Awesome news!
Help! I just made these, and while they were nice & flaky, they also were very bitter from the baking soda. Does it have to be 3 tsp? I was actually confused about that to start with – figuring if it were really 3 tsp, you would have written 1 TBS. Did I just follow the “do’t mix too much” direction too closely, or does it work better if you mix it in water 1st? Do you really mean “baking soda OR salt?” or was that supposed to be AND? I did both & didn’t know if that was also a mistake. Any other tips (surely you’ve been using this recipe for a while now 🙂
Thanks so much for getting back to me!!
Bridget,
the proportions are correct, and thank you, I changed the type “or” to “and” on what you mix in after the soak. I don’t actually make these very often soaked, because they do lose that flakiness that I love so much! I’m hoping the baking soda just didn’t get mixed in; I’ve never noticed a bitter taste myself…
🙂 Katie
That’s because the recipe calls for baking powder, not baking soda. 🙂
Oh, duh! At least the recipe is written right. 😉
I know this is an old post, but was wondering if it would help if you reserved a bit of the liquid for dissolving the baking powder and salt in to ease adding these ingredients after soaking? I have made several batches of biscuits over the years…looking forward to trying them soaked!
Jen,
That’s one I’ve never tried with biscuits, although that is usually how you get yeast into bread dough – a great idea! 🙂 Katie
Tried this last night, didn’t work very well. Completely forgot that baking powder starts acting as soon as it gets wet! Was kinda like folding whipped egg whites into a batter, but with a really stiff batter.
Made these tonight with sausage gravy. I wasn’t too sure of the meal, but my husband said “This better be on the usual weekly meal plan. On a scale of 1 to 10, 768.” So, I guess it’s a winner!!
Thanks! Can’t wait to try it.
Katie
Would these work (before being baked) in a recipe that calls for Pillsbury biscuits?
Thanks!