Buttermilk Bacon Biscuits
This recipe is adapted from Cooking Light. Once you get the hang of making these biscuits, you’ll be making them all the time. They’re fluffy, flaky, and full of bacon. Try them with butter and jam and you’ll thank me.
Servings: 10 -12 small biscuits
Ingredients
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 2 ½ teaspoons baking powder
- ½ teaspoons kosher salt
- 5 tablespoons cold unsalted butter cut into ½-inch dice
- ¾ cup cold buttermilk
- 3 tablespoons honey
- 3 strips of cooked and cooled thick cut bacon or 5 pieces of regular bacon, cut into pieces
- 3 tablespoons chives sliced
Instructions
- Set the oven to 400 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
- In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt. Add the cold butter cubes and use your fingertips to quickly incorporate the butter into the flour, until you’re left with small pea-sized butter pieces, and a coarse meal. Put the bowl into the fridge if the butter is getting too warm.
- Whisk the cold buttermilk and honey together in a measuring cup. Add it to the flour/ butter mixture and gently stir together with a rubber spatula until the flour has absorbed all the liquid. Add the chopped bacon and chives and mix until incorporated. Using your hands, gently knead the dough in the bowl a couple times until it comes together and there are no flour pieces at the bottom of the bowl. Don’t overwork the dough.
- Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface, and gently knead the dough about 3-4 times max. With a floured rolling pin, roll the dough into a rough rectangle, about ½-inch thick. Then fold it into thirds, as if folding a letter. Make a quarter turn, roll it out ½-inch thick again and fold it into thirds again. This creates layers.
- Roll it out until it is ¾-inch thick. Stamp out biscuits using approximately a 2-inch cutter, or cut it into a 2-inch squares with your knife. Don’t wiggle the cutter or use a rocking motion with your knife. It will ruin your layers. Just stamp or slice straight up and down. Try to stamp out biscuits as close to each other, because the ones you make from re-rolled scraps tend to not rise as high. Gather any scraps together, and stamp again. Dust the bottoms off with a dry pastry brush to remove extra flour. Place biscuits on the tray.
- Place the whole tray in the refrigerator for 10 minutes. This will ensure the butter is cold, which forms steam pockets and creates height in the oven. Pop it into the oven until puffed and lightly golden brown on the tops, about 11-12 minutes. The bottoms will be darker. Place biscuits on a cooling rack. Serve while still warm, or warm them up again in the microwave. Keep extras in the freezer and warm them in the oven or the microwave.