Using a pastry blender, cut in butter and shortening until mixture resembles coarse crumbs.
Make a well in the center of the flour mixture. Add milk all at once. Using a fork, stir just until mixture is moistened.
Turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface. Knead dough by folding and gently pressing it for four to six strokes or just until dough holds together.
Pat or lightly roll dough until ¾ inch thick. Cut dough with a floured 2½-inch biscuit cutter; reroll scraps as necessary and dip cutter into flour between cuts.
Place dough circles 1 inch apart on an ungreased baking sheet. If desired, brush with additional milk for browning. Bake 10 to 14 minutes or until golden. Remove biscuits from baking sheet and serve warm.
Test Kitchen Tip: Biscuits don't have to be round. You could also cut biscuits with a square cutter, or roll the dough into a rectangle and cut it into strips or squares. Or roll the dough into a circle and cut into wedges. Just always aim for 12 biscuits so the bake time doesn't need adjusting.
Drop Biscuits Variation:
Cut the prep time of this recipe almost in half by skipping the kneading, rolling, and cutting steps. Prepare as above through Step 3, except increase the milk to 1¼ cups. Using a large spoon, drop dough into 12 mounds onto a greased baking sheet. Bake as directed above. Makes 12 biscuits.
Buttermilk Biscuits Variation:
Prepare as above, except for rolled dough biscuits substitute 1¼ cups buttermilk or sour milk for the 1 cup milk. For drop biscuits substitute 1½ cups buttermilk or sour milk for the 1¼ cups milk.
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 you fold the dough, these pieces of butter stack on top of each other, creating rough layers of butter and dough that translate to flakiness once baked. Buttermilk Biscuits get maximum flakiness from a folding step built into the recipe.
HEAT oven to 350°F (or 325°F for nonstick cookie sheet). PLACE biscuits 1 to 2 inches apart on ungreased cookie sheet. BAKE 13 to 16 minutes or until golden brown.
Fat—butter and shortening in this recipe—creates the tender texture of biscuits and helps form the flaky layers. Butter delivers rich flavor. But because shortening contains no water, it creates more-distinct layers, which is why our Test Kitchen uses a combination of the two.
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!). See our easy drop biscuits and cheese drop biscuits for even easier biscuits.
Just as important as the fat is the liquid used to make your biscuits. Our Buttermilk Biscuit recipe offers the choice of using milk or buttermilk. Buttermilk is known for making biscuits tender and adding a zippy tang, so we used that for this test.
Biscuit dough is moist and sticky, so much so that it may seem too wet after you've added all your flour. If you do think this about your dough, fight the urge to add more dry ingredients — dough that isn't wet enough will bake into a hard, dry biscuit.
Baked goods may require longer baking time and also may be more likely to stick. Biscuits, scones and shortcakes are usually baked on ungreased cookie sheets or baking pans. Follow the directions in your recipe.
When the fat is cut too small, after baking there will be more, smaller air pockets left by the melting fat. The result is a baked product that crumbles. When cutting in shortening and other solid fats, cut only until the pieces of shortening are 1/8- to 1/4-inch in size.
The properties of tenderness and flakiness can occur together or separately. Ideally a pastry has both properties. Thorough mixing of fat and flour usually results in more tender pastry than does minimal mixing. Pastry usually is more tender when the ingredients and dough are warm than when they are cold.
The key to standard pie crust is having pockets of fat surrounded by flour. But if that fat starts to melt and mixes with the flour, it can start to develop gluten, which can lead to a tough crust. To prevent this, keep everything as cold as possible.
Introduction: My name is Mrs. Angelic Larkin, I am a cute, charming, funny, determined, inexpensive, joyous, cheerful person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
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