I'm not sure what inspired me to attempt perfectly flaky buttermilk biscuits, but I found myself one weekend morning buying buttermilk with this idea in mind.
I decided to use a Cook's Illustrated recipe, which while laborious, ended up being very easy to follow and produced the precise result I was looking for.
You start in the standard way for making flaky pastry – combined chilled butter and shortening with dry ingredients, and pulsing (by hand in this case) until you have small bits of fat interspersed throughout the dough.
Chill the dough before adding in the buttermilk to bring the dry mixture into a cohesive dough, and then start the rolling process to get distinct biscuit layers.
This repeated folding and rolling process is critical to disperse the butter and shortening across the dough. Dispersal is critical for flaky layers as the fat will expand throughout the dough during the baking process. It's also what makes make layered, flaky biscuits more difficult to prepare than drop biscuits.
When two rounds of rolling and folding are complete, it's time to cut out the biscuits and then brush them with melted butter before baking. This was my favorite part of the process – to see the layers in the dough and get excited for the final result!
Out of the oven, these biscuits were perfect – browned, lots of clear layers, and very flaky. They do need some sort of butter or jam though to be truly flavorful, so I might tweak the flavors in the future. Otherwise, a great recipe.
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