How to Make the Flakiest Biscuits Ever

[Music] although biscuits can range in shape and sizes they're basically made from the same four ingredients you've got flour fat leavener and dairy but the hardest to make of all is the flaky biscuit you have to get those layers of flakiness just right here to show us the right way to the flaky biscuit world is aaron yes i'm going to show you how to make the best flakiest biscuit you've ever had that's a tall order i think i can eat it we're going to start with our flour i have three cups of king arthur all-purpose flour and we're using specifically king arthur flour because it has a higher protein content than most other all-purpose flours is close to 13 the higher protein content is going to give us more gluten which is going to create more structure in our biscuits okay to this we're going to add two tablespoons of sugar four teaspoons of baking powder we need our biscuits to have some lift half a teaspoon of baking soda and one and a half teaspoons of table salt so i'm just going to whisk it together combine it right up so now we're going to move on to our fat we are using two sticks of butter it's unsalted butter so there's gonna be 16 tablespoons of butter in our biscuits all day that's fine by me fabulous right and this is frozen butter i put this in the freezer for 30 minutes i'm just going to coat this stick of butter in our flour mixture and that's just going to make it very easy for us to handle as we prep it now i'm going to score one tablespoon's worth i'm going to grate the butter so by grating the butter this is going to give us very uniform pieces of butter that we're going to add that's going to help to create flaky biscuits i'm going to stop braiding at that line which is going to save my fingers and we're going to use that for later okay good as you can see this butter is cold so it's not melting in my hands and also the flour is allowing me to really grate it okay so now i'm just going to take this butter and add it to my flour mixture now i'm going to coat this butter and i'm just making sure that each piece of butter gets coated with flour so that it stays separate but at this point you're not really working it in right i'm not working it in okay i should also mention that we're using all butter here and no shortening shortening is very soft and it does not contain water and we want as much water in our fat as we can because that's going to help to create steam as the biscuits rise now i'm going to add one and a quarter cup of buttermilk okay buttermilk is great to use because it adds tang so i'm just going to stir this until it just comes together it's not going to come together as much as you think it's going to come together bridgette you're going to want to add more buttermilk to it that's about as far as we're going to get really yep that's not cohesive at all cohesive just starting to come together so we're going to move over here okay i'm just going to flour our board and as i mentioned the butter is going to help us to get flakes on our biscuits but we needed something else to give them that ultra flaky and what we're going to do is we're going to go through a series of creating a lot of layers okay first i'm going to pat this into a seven inch square our butter was really chilled our buttermilk is really chilled i want to keep this as cold as possible so i want to touch it as little as possible because my hands are going to warm it up the bench scraper is the best tool to use when making biscuits because it just kind of gives you a flat edge to help shape it and it also allows you to not touch it i'm going to now roll this into a 9 by 12 inch rectangle and i'm going to do that five times bridget and i don't know about you but i lose track of where i'm at because i get into it and i just i'm like was that three or was that four or was that five right so i kind of created a little uh foolproof technique for myself it's my scoreboard i'm gonna give it a notch each time i roll it out very very i need it you might not need it oh no i do need it so now i'm going to roll this into 9 by 12 inch rectangle the short end is going to be closest to me okay and again i don't want to touch it with my hands that much so we're at 9 inches by 12 inches you can actually see our little sheets of butter are getting flatter and they're getting longer flatter and longer and i'm going to fold this like a business letter and i really need the bench scraper for this stage i'm just going to kind of lift this up and flip it over i promise it's going to come together i'm going to pat it together into a log really press down so that those layers stick and then rotate it so that the short end is closest to me so that was your first that was my first set of folds now i'm going to roll it out again so now we're at nine by 12. flip up all right and flip up one more notch three more times all right okay okay so now this is the fifth and final roll and you can see i'm having to work it a little bit harder it is because the gluten is building up yeah the butter pieces that you can see are even longer and flatter than they were at turn number two yeah starting to fight you back just a little bit i'm gonna win [Laughter] well it's still it's so antithetical to biscuit dough any kind that i've ever made you take flour and you have butter and usually shortening you get one roll and that's and that's it we are there okay so this is the last fold a lot easier to fold so much easier wow beautiful it's like a book from here we're going to roll this into an eight and a half inch square it's really important that you roll evenly so that the layers that you are creating as you're building this they stay in line if i really pressed hard a center might pop out and it just wouldn't yield the perfect biscuits okay we have an eight and a half inch square so i'm gonna transfer this to this rim baking sheet with parchment paper underneath it i'm gonna cover this with plastic wrap and we're going to refrigerate this for 30 minutes we want all that butter to firm back up before we bake them okay bridgette this has chilled for 30 minutes very firm nice and firm now i'm going to transfer it to a lightly floured cutting board the next step is i'm going to trim quarter inch off all the edges but first i'm going to flour my knife it's really important that you have a sharp knife in his flower so that it cuts right through because i don't want to squish the dough as i'm pressing i want the knife to just go right through it so no round biscuit cutters at this point we are actually going to be making square biscuits i did not want to have any leftover trim and i didn't want to re-roll the trim it's very modern too actually all the cool kids are making square biscuits so i'm just going to keep my knife nice and floured and now i'm going to cut this into nine squares so i'm just going to go quick sharp cuts that cuts beautifully yeah almost like fudge yeah actually super firm as you can see those are all the layers that we work so hard for how many layers is that a lot a lot [Laughter] so now we're going to transfer them to a ribbon baking sheet that's lined with parchment paper set them up so that they're at least one inch apart from each other okay now those two tablespoons of butter that we had left over from earlier i melted it and i'm just gonna brush them all with a little bit more butter now we're gonna bake them we're gonna put them into a 400 degree oven on the upper middle rack for 20 to 25 minutes and we're going to rotate it halfway through okay there's some scraps here now i know erin said that we don't like to press it together roll it out and stamp it into biscuits this is how you can use this leftover dough make a couple little rosettes as a treat so you just take two strips of dough start rolling it up just like that pinch that on there so it sticks these can be brushed with butter you can top them with cinnamon sugar bake them at the same time as your biscuits okay bridgette what do you think these are gorgeous yeah you can actually see the striations all those layers in there and i have here a biscuit that would show you what would happen if i actually did not trim off a quarter of an inch they don't rise evenly so by cutting off that quarter inch it releases all the layers to rise freely this was the edge that you that was the edge so we're just going to let these cool for about 15 minutes and then they're going to rest if we dove into them right now all the steam would escape and they would just eat a little drier than they should so we really want them to rest and settle down all right bridgette cool enough been 15 minutes yes cool enough but still warm there you are thank you welcome my favorite part about eating these is when you open them up and there's those different layers that you can actually choose from as you open it look at that sheets of layers would you like some jam we have some orange marmalade and we have some raspberry preserves what i don't see out here is butter i love butter brigitte but these really you don't need it i'm going to taste those first side without marmalade as way past flaky that's way past ultra flaky that's impossibly flaky and tender it's so tender crispy on the outside yeah so soft and velvety on the inside that tang the buttermilk buttery not fatty definitely buttery and all that butter stayed in the biscuits as i baked as opposed to coming out because of that extra gluten that we had in structure these are flaky and tender that's impossible if i hadn't seen it with my own eyes i wouldn't have believed you could do this it's a snap it's a snap aaron's a miracle worker now for the flakiest biscuits you've ever seen grape butter into flour and leaveners mix in buttermilk and roll out the dough fold like a business letter five times trim the chilled dough and cut into squares bake until brown cool not too long and eat with jam or preserves so from our test kitchen to your kitchen the tallest most tender buttery flaky buttermilk biscuits all right back to the marmalade thanks for watching america's test kitchen what'd you think well leave a comment and let us know which recipes you're excited to make or you can just say hello you can find links to today's recipes and reviews in the video description and don't forget to subscribe to our channel see you later i'll see you later

Channel: America's Test Kitchen

Views: 453,741

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Id: oUkmTHA7AEw

Length: 9min 49sec (589 seconds)

Published: Fri May 15 2020