Everyone should have the opportunity to experience the joy of making homemade biscuits and all manners of breads from scratch.
My entire life, I have been able to express my creativity within the walls of my kitchen through:
- Baking
- Savory Meals
- Herbal Medicine Making
It was my mother and great-grandmother that taught me the art of homemade.
I learned standing by their sides.
Generation to generation…the skills were passed on.
A Case for Making Your Own Bread
Throughout time and ancient cultures, bread has been revered as a sacred source of life.
Bread was such an important staple primarily because it was considered:
- nourishing
- practical
- healthy
- appetizing
Today bread — and all of sorts of its varieties — are readily available on nearly every street corner and grocery.
Since the farming shifts and introduction of industrialized agriculture…producers of food have been forced to produce the maximum amount of food for the minimum out-of-pocket costs. Leaving consumers with a cheaper, longer-lasting product, devoid of nutrition — and disastrous health to accompany.
Darina Allen says it best in her book Forgotten Skills of Cooking:
During the last 50 years the sales of bread have plummeted and the number of people with wheat allergies and full-blown celiac disease has skyrocketed. Once the (industrial method of bread production) was universally adopted all research was dedicated to producing varieties of short-stem wheat, strains of yeast and additives to facilitate this fast production method. Nourishment just simply wasn’t a factor. Advances in functional properties of wheat have come at the expense of nutritional quality.
I won’t go any further into this very complex issue.
I’m just attempting to give a case for making your own breads…and with this particular recipe — biscuits.
How to Make Homemade Biscuits from Scratch
I love biscuits and so does my family. If you’re gluten free then this recipe might not work for you, but you can probably switch out the wheat flour for almond or coconut flour instead.
Homemade Biscuits Ingredients
-3 cups organic, unbleached all-purpose flour
-1/2 teaspoon real salt
-4 teaspoons aluminum free baking powder
-1 1/2 tablespoons raw honey
-1/2 cup grass-fed tallow, or butter from grass-fed cows
-1 pastured egg
-1 cup whole milk, or homemade buttermilk (see recipe below)
Supplies Needed
- Pastry Blender, or use your food processor or Kitchen Aid Mixer
- Flour Sifter
- Biscuit Cutter, or the top of a wide-mouth glass mason jar will do just fine
- Rolling Pin
- Cookie Sheet, or 12″ round cast iron skillet
Homemade Biscuits Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.
- Sift together flour, salt, and baking powder.
- Using a pastry blender, food processor, or Kitchen Aid Mixer cut cold tallow (or cold butter) into the flour.
- Stir in the remaining ingredients just until the dry ingredients are wet and well incorporated.
- Flour a flat surface.
- Dump the dough onto the floured surface.
- Using a rolling pin, roll out the dough until desired thickness is achieved. Note: I roll mine out anywhere from 3/4″-1″ thick.
- With a biscuit cutter or top of jar/cup — cut out your biscuits! Note: You will have to continue to ball up and roll out your dough again a few more times before all the biscuits are cut.
- Place cut biscuit dough on cookie sheet or cast iron skillet.
- Cook in oven for 13-17 minutes. Watch closely and remove when biscuits are golden brown and fluffy.
Notes:
To make your own buttermilk, combine 2 cups of whole milk (preferably raw) and 1 tablespoon of lemon juice in a bowl and let stand at room temperature for about 15 minutes. The milk will curdle. Stir well before using and store in the refrigerator. It will keep fresh for a couple of days.
Ever made your own homemade biscuits completely from scratch? How did they turn out?
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Wow. Those look fabulous. I can’t wait for tomorrow morning. So making these!
They are AWESOME! Super flaky layers:)
I love, love, love making my own bread and biscuits…I don’t however, find the time to do it as often as I’d like to. Thanks for this kick in the pants to get me going 😉
in NewZealand we call these scones. Our biscuits are a sweet treat. good with a hot chocolate drink.
In Canada we call them baking powder biscuits 🙂 So easy and tasty .
i read somewhere that you can make baking powder with baking soda and cream of tarter, just mix 1 tsp of each to make 2 tsp of baking powder. Do you know if it works as well?
Well I’m not sure! Does anyone know if this would work?
Yep! It works! That’s how I make my own baking powder, and it is perfect for all recipes…and cheaper. 🙂
…but it’s one tsp of cream of tartar to two teaspoons baking soda…
Gah! I meant TWO teaspoons cream of tartar and ONE tsp baking soda! It’s too early. 🙂
Just made these, and they are delicious!!! My husband want me to make these instead of my reciepe i usually use from now on because they are SOOOOO Good. Thanks for sharing 🙂
Awww Mary! That’s so awesome! Aren’t they just the best!?!
Those look great – yummmm! May I suggest a super healthy version using coconut flour and raw goat milk?
Make your own gravy by browning a bit of flour in the oven and then whisking it in a pan with milk over the oven – adjust the amount of flour and or milk as needed to achieve desired consistency. The secret to good smooth gravy is to keep whisking away merrily.
One look at the ingredient list on bread bag was enough to push me into figuring out how to make bread a year or two ago. Since then I have enjoyed trying all different kinds. Can’t wait to give your biscuits a try!
Just made these this morning. YUM!!! I made the buttermilk version with powdered buttermilk. I snuck in 1/2 cup whole wheat flour too. Homemade jam and we are happy campers. THANKS
I too learned an immeasurable amount cooking and baking alongside my Grandmother and my Mom. Oh the things that even the best cookbook can’t teach you. And now as I look back, Mom and Dad live over a thousand miles away, and my Grandma has passed. How much more could I have learned! I pass this legacy on whenever I take the time to my two boys and I’ve been known to teach my wife a thing or two also. thank you for spurring the memory, thank you for the straightforward recipe and its purity and thank you for doing what you do.
Too bad, I thought you were going to give a recipe for making Tim Tam’s!
The term biscuit is not universal!
This is similar to my scone recipe…our southern biscuits do not have sugar/honey or egg. I’m going to give it a try…looks like it will be good with tea or coffee.
These look wonderful. I have tried biscuits before and failed many times- until I came across a recipe that said the trick is to chill the biscuits on the pan well before baking. It worked! I put the biscuits on the cookie sheet then in the fridge for 30 minutes before baking. Next I’m going to see if they are good baked from the freezer.
As a vegan I will have to substitute the egg, butter and honey so it will be edible and healthy but I sure will try them!
If you don’t have one of these Pastry Blender, or use your food processor or Kitchen Aid Mixer (and I don’t) use your hands or crisscross two knives ! In keeping with the frugal intent.
I’ve been using a recipe VERY similar to this for years and they are so, so good!
A few tips:
In UK and New Zealand these are called scones. Biscuits are sweet like timtams or afgans or digestives. What you describe as “buttermilk” is soured milk and not buttermilk. Buttermilk is the watery fluid that is a leftover from making butter which is left to ferment, hence called “buttermilk”. Scones can be made savoury or sweet. You can put in it vegetable, cheese or anything that tickles your fancy. Important in making scones is that the ingredients are fridge cold and it is mixed with cold hands and quite fast, so don’t OVERMIX”. I have never put my scones in the fridge before baking.
I’ve been making homemade bread products (bread, biscuits, scones, pizza dough, etc) for almost 5 years now due to our son’s food allergies. My quickest go-to recipe is a simple baking powder biscuit – I do it by memory now.
Well I’m with Dee and Christel, I’d call these scones, and even though I live in North Carolina now, I learned to make what I call biscuits up north in New Jersey without eggs or sweetener. Having lived in England for awhile back in the 80’s I’m familiar with the confusion between scones (sweet and/or savory), biscuits and cookies. There are lots of examples of such vocabulary mix ups. And I agree, that is soured milk, not buttermilk, but in the US we also have a cultured product called buttermilk, made from skimmed milk, very tasty and good for cooking. It is my understanding that this was developed to replicate the real buttermilk that is leftover from making butter from clabbered or soured cream when commercial production of butter moved to using sweet cream. That is one reason why it is commercially available made only from skim milk, cost being another. You can make it at home from whole or skim milk.
To make buttermilk, all you need to do is mix about 2 tbsp of regular milk with cultured buttermilk and leave at room temp for 24 hours. The end result will be buttermilk as the the regular milk has been mixed with the buttermilk cultures. Any fat milk is usable.
I don’t understand why so many insist on using cows milk, it is not suited for human consumption at all and is actually dangerous to your bones and your health in general.
I don’t understand why so many insist on using cows milk, it is not suited for human consumption at all and is actually destroys your bones and your health in general.
Some of us feel that raw cows milk is very good for you, to each their own!
Barbara-
You forgot the following text in your statement above, which I have taken the liberty of adding for you here in in all capitals:
“AS A VEGAN, I don’t understand why so many insist on using cows milk. IN MY OPINION, it is not suited for human consumption at all, and I BELIEVE it actually destroys your bones and your health in general.”
There you go! You’re welcome. Now as soon as you can point to scientific research published in peer-reviewed journals, you are free to make your claims without the qualifiers. And please include your references when you do so. Thank you.
This recipe looks delicious! And you are half right. These are scones. Biscuits do NOT contain eggs.
Can someone tell me how many biscuits the original recipe makes? Thanks!
In reference to your comment on wheat production and all of the other commodities related to the production of baked goods in general. Judging from my Grandmothers recipes and the what is available on the shelf today there is no comparison. ALL of the ingredients have changed to a degree. She did not have vegetable shorting, butter was different, milk was not processed, flour had no additives and in general things tasted better and were healthy. We ATE huge meals as family with home made biscuits almost daily my Grandfather and my uncles ALL worked very hard and burned off most of what they ate they all lived into their 90’s because they food was natural, organic and without additives. Thanks for your comments. an avid cook and and health fanatic.
@ Ronald: I couldn’t agree with you more. Food is different now than it was back when our grandparents were growing up and even when they were adults (I’m 63). All of my grandparents lived to latter 80’s or early to mid 90’s. They all worked hard (I had one set of city grandparents and one set of farm grandparents) but no matter what they did for work, they worked hard.
Modern medicine claims people are living longer today. I don’t know who’s fudging the numbers but someone is. The only people who are still living longer are the people who would have anyway – people from the pre-WW2 and right after WW2 generation. The people BORN during the 1940’s are not living longer (just go through any city’s local obit section). I’m the youngest of 5 kids and have already lost three siblings. My oldest brothers were twins and one of them is all that’s left besides me, and he’s 75. He still lives in my hometown and doesn’t run to a doctor with every little ache and pain (they have no doctor – closest one is 30 miles away, closest hospital is 120 miles away). Not only that, there’s not one single phast phood place in town, there’s only one restaurant and it’s closed more than it’s open.
So it’s my feeling that sometimes less is more. 😉 Food and quality of ingredients most certainly played a role in life spans past. For once I wish I could turn the clock back on corporate america because in the “food” production area, they’ve done us no favors. Neither has importing foods or ingredients from other countries when we have the same stuff right here in America. It’s costing us our health, to be sure.
I have been making my own bread and biscuits for about 2 years now. My family and I had developed a few health issues related to wheat. But now that I make it myself no problems! I am still working on hamburger buns and hot dog buns, I’ll get eventually. I just recently started sourdough bread. Very time consuming, definitely a weekend bread!
I grew up with these. They are called Baking Powder Biscuits and are kinda like an English muffin. Flakier than an English Muffin though. We ate them with raw (unpasteurized) honey or cinnamon and sugar when I was a kid.