For The Best Biscuits, Only Re-Roll The Dough Once

There's nothing like sitting down to a homemade platter of buttermilk biscuits. Especially when you're able to savor every buttery bite with a slather of your favorite jam, biscuits prove to be the ultimate comfort food. Any experienced home chef already knows the key to moist and flavorful biscuits: those one-of-a-kind butter-filled flaky layers. When making biscuits at home, apart from measuring out your dry ingredients properly and using ice-cold butter, there may be one trick to creating perfect biscuits you have yet to try.

While using cold butter is a given, maintaining its chilled temperature, despite the mixing process, is crucial. To do this, you need to avoid overmixing your biscuit dough ingredients. The best way to sidestep overhandling is by re-rolling your dough only once. In doing so, you end up mixing your dough less, which means less heat ends up emanating from your hands. The butter will stay cold and the dough itself will maintain a tender consistency throughout the baking process. Yet, for those after well-defined flaky flavors, this one- to two-roll method can seem problematic. If you've become accustomed to rolling out classic biscuit dough over and over again, there is not only a unique way of folding your dough that requires less handling, but there are a few additional steps worth following to ensure you don't overmix the ingredients.

To make perfect biscuits in a few simple steps, start by methodically combining your ingredients. For example, instead of cubing cold butter, press this golden fat against a box grater to incorporate butter into dry ingredients more thoroughly. You may even consider pulsing the suggested butter, flour, baking powder, and salt in your food processor a few times before adding buttermilk. The use of your food processor will cut down on dough handling which ultimately means a lower incidence of melted butter and overworked dough.

Once your ingredients have been combined, gently roll out your biscuit dough evenly on a clean and flat surface. Dough that's been mixed until just combined may seem a bit uneven so carefully roll out the dough with a rolling pin or press and spread gently with your hands. You want a large enough rectangle so you can easily use a tri-letter folding technique. Fold one side of the dough to the middle and follow suit with the other side overlapping the first. Then turn the dough to face you horizontally, flatten out slightly with your hands, and complete the tri-fold technique twice more. In the end, you want your folded dough approximately an inch thick for even cutting. Speaking of cutting, there are a few more pointers to keep in mind as you work to produce flakier biscuits.

Since you already know how to make the best buttermilk biscuits with ice-cold butter, not to mention the importance of minimal dough handling, it's time to perfect these flaky foods right to the end. Now that your dough has been gently rolled and folded, work to cut your biscuits with keen precision. When using a biscuit cutter, try to avoid rotating the cutter back and forth. You may inadvertently press down on your dough too firmly which may decrease your biscuits' overall rise. Instead, press your cutter directly into dough and with your finger, push out the dough rounds from the inside, or instead, use a sharp knife or pizza cutter to create even biscuit squares.

If you want your biscuits to have proper height, place biscuit rounds in a smaller cast-iron pan or sheet pan so the ends are slightly touching. This causes biscuits to expand together and achieve the ultimate oven rise. Lastly, if you want to take your perfectly prepared biscuits to the next level, brush them with a bit of melted butter once they've been baked. The creamy salted spread will melt and set within those hot biscuit layers, resulting in some truly delicious baked goods. If flaky biscuits are one of your go-to meal accompaniments, the next time you bust out your traditional recipe, remember less is more and only roll out your precious dough one or two times to achieve ultimate satisfaction.