If you’ve never made biscuits before, I have to tell you, there is something very satisfying about digging your hands into dough and creating flaky goodness in just a few minutes.

This is a very basic buttermilk recipe and there are many ways to play with it. You can make herb biscuits – stir minced fresh herbs or a pinch of dried herbs into the flour before you add the butter. After you add the butter you can add small dices of your favorite cheese or add ham chunks, minced green chiles, orange zest – whatever you want! Let your imagination run free! Doesn’t get any better than that, does it? 🙂

Basic Buttermilk Biscuits

2 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 tsp baking soda
1 TBS baking powder
6 TBS unsalted butter, very cold *
1 cup buttermilk

* One very important tip: the butter for your biscuits should be cold! Very, very cold. Cut the butter into small pieces, put them on a small plate or in a small bowl and put it in the freezer while you prepare the rest of the dough.

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.

Mix together the flour, baking soda and baking powder in a food processor. Add your ice-cold butter and pulse a few times. You want some pieces to be reduced to flakes and others to be pebbly and about the size of peas. Don’t over work the dough at this step. The water in the butter turns to steam in the oven and puffs the biscuits to give you those light flaky layers! YUMM!

Mix the cold buttermilk into the dough with a fork. If it seems dry, add a bit more buttermilk. It should be a fairly wet dough.

Turn the dough out onto a floured work surface and pat it into a circle about 1/2-inch thick. Do NOT roll the dough. This will over work the gluten in the biscuit and make it tough. Fold the dough over several times, gently pressing down to about 1 inch thickness.

Cut the dough into rounds with a biscuit cutter. If you don’t have a biscuit cutter, you can always use a knife and cut the biscuits into squares. You could get really crazy and use different shape cut outs too!

For soft-sided biscuits, place the biscuits with their edges together on the baking sheet. These biscuits tend to rise more (plus I like them better!) For crusty biscuits, put them about an inch apart, so the heat can circulate around them.

Bake for 10-12 minutes or until they are light golden brown. Don’t overbake!

And you can freeze the biscuits before they’re baked! After you cut them, put the circles (or squares) on a baking sheet and pop them in the freezer. As soon as the dough is frozen, pack them in an airtight container or a freezer bag. Then, when you’re ready for hot, flakey buttermilk biscuits, pull out what you need and bake them! Put them frozen straight onto a baking sheet and bake about 18-20 minutes at 450 degrees.

See, great bread doesn’t have to be hard! Besides, if you make sausage gravy to go with these biscuits, you have an amazing Sunday breakfast!