Wild Thyme- Buttermilk Biscuits

Chef Allison Davis shows us how to make buttermilk biscuits on today's Wild Thyme.

C1 3 allison davis: welcome back to midday kentucky, chef allison davis here in the wild thyme kitchen back at home and i'm feeling like my old self and i'm making one of my favorite things, and that is homemade buttermilk biscuits.

So if you are from kentucky or from the south, you know everybody's grandmother has their own special biscuit, their own special recipe.

So before you get too judgmental, just bear with me.

This is a good recipe.

It's easy and there's really nothing quite like a homemade biscuit on saturday morning with brunch or just with a little bit of honey butter, which is what we're going to put on this one.

So i hope that you enjoy this for many, many, many brunches to come.

All right, first we're going to talk a little bit about flour because not all all-purpose flours are made the same.

So i like to use king arthur or a nice unbleached flour for biscuits.

I've used some flours that are just very like run of the mill and when the biscuits bake up they are a kind of a bit grainy.

So i think it's really important that you get a high quality flour when you're making biscuits because honestly that's the main ingredient that goes into a biscuit.

So spend that little extra money on a really good quality flour.

All right, we are using all- purpose flour, not as self-rising.

So i'm going to go ahead and start measuring this out.

We're going to start with two and a half cups of our all- purpose flour.

Just kind of pad it in there.

Again, my measurements are not crucial.

You can double, triple this recipe, but just two and a half cups.

And i know i've got a black apron on and it's inevitable that i'm going to have flour everywhere.

It never fails.

I'll wear white and i'll get chocolate all over me and i'll wear black and i'll get flour everywhere.

It just never fails.

All right, so we've got two and a half cups of flour.

Then we're going to add our leaveners.

Okay, so our leaveners for our biscuits is a combination of baking powder, which we have about one and a half tablespoons of baking powder and then a teaspoon of baking soda.

All right, a little bit of salt is going to help flavor our biscuit, so i really don't measure that.

I just kind of do a nice little pinch of salt and an equal pinch of sugar into our flour.

All right, so that's our dry ingredients.

Very simple.

Then the next step and the key with a good biscuit is cutting in cold butter.

Okay.

I use butter.

I like butter a lot.

I'm using a scale just to make sure my measurement's right, which we're going with about a half a cup, which is equivalent to kind of like one stick i believe.

And so when we cut in the butter, you could use a pastry cutter, you could use a knife.

I tend to think sometimes your hands are your best tools, but we really just want to break this butter up and we're going to break this up to where it resembles kind of like a little bit of cornmeal.

Like you want it to be very mealy where the butter is all worked in.

So we have cut in our butter and now we're going to add in our butter milk.

Again, buttermilk i think is another key ingredient when it comes to a really good biscuit.

We're going in with a cup of buttermilk and this is just going to give it that little bit of acidity.

It's going to help work with the baking soda to help the biscuit to rise a little bit as well.

And then i just think it gives it such a rich flavor, better than just whole milk or cream.

All right, so if you notice what i'm doing here, i'm very gently just kind of incorporating the flour and the buttermilk just to get a nice dough.

We're going to roll this out.

The key with a great biscuit is you do not want to over mix.

You just want it to come together, pat this baby out and then let it, we're going to cut it with a biscuit cutter and then get this in the oven and you will see the results.

All right.

I don't know if you can see how gorgeous these are.

You certainly, i wish you could smell how wonderful they are.

All right, our biscuits have been cooking at about 400 degrees and i really, more or less, i'm looking to see that they're nice and golden brown.

We're going to finish these up with a little bit of just warm, melted butter over the top, and then it's a personal preference, but you could also, and what i'm going to do with these is drizzle a little bit of fresh honey over it.

And again, there's so many different things you can do with this, from making little sandwiches to biscuits and gravy to having a biscuit bar with an assortment of jams and jellies.

But this recipe is a winner, and i hope that you all enjoy this every saturday morning from now on.

All right, well, you guys know exactly where to find this recipe.

You can go to middaykentucky.com /recipes.

I'm chef allison davis.

You're watching midday kentucky.

We'll be right back after this short break.

Speaker 1: hey guys, we are here with hayden mesa and she is a certified nurse