Things bakers know: Break this biscuit rule before baking

Since I moved to Los Angeles nearly a decade ago, people back home in South Carolina have been asking me what I miss the most about living in the South. They usually expect me to cite less traffic (it’s really not that bad here) or better manners (you’d be surprised …). But the answer I give every time is easy: biscuits. I miss good biscuits! 

With a few exceptions, it’s hard to find the biscuits I love outside of the South. And so, like many bakers, I’ve had to turn to my own kitchen to satisfy my cravings.

I'm not always successful: It’s easy to make a good biscuit, but it’s hard to make a great one. Which is why I was so thrilled that legendary biscuit baker Erika Council shared her best biscuit tips with King Arthur a few years ago. This article by Vonnie Williams is packed with great advice, but buried at the bottom is a genius biscuit tip that broke every rule I thought I knew about biscuit making. Erika advises cutting circles of biscuits in the dough — and then leaving the surrounding scrap dough in place until after baking. Once baked, you can pull apart the biscuits (and munch on the leftover scraps).

The reason for this unique baking method? It keeps the biscuits extra soft and fluffy around the edges, rather than exposing them to brown and crisp in the oven. In her cookbook, Still We Rise, Erika includes this method in her Pull-Apart Biscuits recipe, also referring to them as “sheet-pan biscuits,” though the method will work with any biscuit recipe.

Photography and food styling by Liz Neily

I tried it with our Buttermilk Biscuits, and I could immediately see the difference. I baked a few individually cut-out biscuits and a few biscuits surrounded by scraps of dough. The separated biscuits had crunchy, dried-out edges that hardened in the oven, while the biscuits that baked in the dough had super-soft edges that reminded me somewhat of pillowy milk bread. And as an added bonus, keeping the cut biscuits surrounded by dough prevented them from toppling in the oven, so they remained proudly straight and tall.

Part of what I love about this method is that it replicates the ultra-soft, fluffy biscuits I grew up with in the Carolinas. While I enjoy a flaky, laminated biscuit with nearly fried edges and ultra-striated layers, they’re not the classic Southern version I crave, which are more like bread than pastry. But thanks to Erika and her baking tips, home is just a bag of self-rising flour and a few sticks of butter away.

Cover photo and food styling by Liz Neily.