I always forget how easy butter milk biscuits are — one bowl wonders, ready in a snap! With soup and stew season upon us, this biscuit recipe, with maple and sea salt, is a good one to have on hand. // alexandracooks.com

I have read about Joanne Chang in blogs and magazines for years, watched her beat Bobby Flay in a sticky bun throwdown, drooled over both of her cookbooks at the library, but for reasons I can’t explain had never made any of her recipes until a few days ago.

Joanne Chang’s Buttermilk Biscuits

The recipe for buttermilk biscuits with maple and black pepper featured below, is in Dana Cowin’s new cookbook, Mastering My Mistakes in the Kitchen. Many of you likely know Dana as the Editor in Chief of Food and Wine magazine, as someone who knows food better than anyone, as someone who wouldn’t make too many mistakes in the kitchen, or who would be an unlikely person to admit to them.

Well, the secret’s out: In MMM, Dana confesses to not being a great cook (though I’m still not sure I quite believe her). I don’t want to give too much away because both the forward, written by Thomas Keller, and Dana’s own introduction are inspiring and funny, highlights being a vignette revealing how Dana’s “fails” in the kitchen led to the creation of a Food and Wine help column under a pseudonym, a story about killing lobsters with Eric Ripert and how he taught her to focus, and a note on how good cooking starts with honesty.

What follows in the book are recipes with advice and tips from 65 professional chefs, including Jean-Georges Vongerichten, Jose Andres, April Bloomfield, David Chang, and Thomas Keller who offers a three-step, foolproof recipe for roast chicken.

Despite the presence and importance of these chefs in the book, however, the recipes are not cheffy at all: think meatballs (and how to make them light and tender), potstickers (and how to make them not only brown but also crisp), great ribs (and a no-fuss way to make them).

Of the 20 recipes I have bookmarked, top picks include halibut cooked in red coconut curry, baked ziti Arrabbiata, Korean meat loaf (made with a whole cup of gochujang chile paste), and braised chicken with leeks.

How to make Better Biscuits

I have made many a biscuit over the years, but until making this recipe, never have I folded the dough over itself four times before cutting it, a step that helps create beautiful layers in the finished biscuits, and never have I chilled the cut biscuits for an hour before baking, a step that helps make the biscuits flakier. This recipe is appended with 10 tips from Joanne ranging from how best to incorporate baking soda (I never would have imagined this to be an issue) to the role sugar plays in baking not only for sweetness but also for texture (also news to me).

  1. Folding the dough four times truly creates incredible flakiness. These biscuits are the lightest, flakiest, best biscuits I’ve ever made.
  2. For a taller biscuit, roll the dough to a thickness of 1-inch.
  3. Maple syrup + Maldon sea salt make for an irresistible salty-sweet top.
  4. Bake on the highest rack for beautifully golden biscuits in 15 minutes. (Every oven is different, however, so watch closely and adjust accordingly)
  5. For no-waste (trimmings/scraps) biscuits, cut the dough into squares  as opposed to circles.
buttermilk biscuit
buttered
dry ingredients
butter

If you live in the area, this is the best buttermilk. Argyle Cheese Farmer also makes the best yogurt. The Niskayuna Co-op carries both:

Argyle Cheese Farmer buttermilk
adding the buttermilk
mixing the dough

The four-fold shaping process:

folding the biscuit dough
rolling the dough
ready to be cut

I find that a one-inch thick dough creates the size biscuit I like best

one inch
scoring dough
biscuit cutter
cut biscuits
ready for the oven
just-baked buttermilk biscuits
I always forget how easy butter milk biscuits are — one bowl wonders, ready in a snap! With soup and stew season upon us, this biscuit recipe, with maple and sea salt, is a good one to have on hand. // alexandracooks.com

Square biscuit made from the scraps:

I always forget how easy butter milk biscuits are — one bowl wonders, ready in a snap! With soup and stew season upon us, this biscuit recipe, with maple and sea salt, is a good one to have on hand. // alexandracooks.com
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Buttermilk Biscuits with Maple and Sea Salt

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Description

Source Dana Cowin’s Mastering My Mistakes in the Kitchen.

Update November 2021: I recently upped the amount of salt here. It had previously been 1 teaspoon (6 grams). I think these biscuits need the updated amount (reflected in the ingredient list below), but if you’ve made these in the past and have been satisfied with the result, you can stick to the 1 teaspoon. 

Ingredients

  • 3 cups (384 g) all-purpose flour, plus more for your work surface
  • 3 tablespoons (44 g) sugar
  • 1 tablespoon (13 g) baking powder
  • 1.5 teaspoon sea salt or 2 teaspoons kosher salt (10 g), see notes above
  • ½ teaspoon (2 g) baking soda
  • 12 tablespoons (170 g) cold unsalted butter, diced, plus more for serving
  • 1¼ cups (330 g) cold buttermilk
  • pure maple syrup, for rubbing the biscuits
  • nice sea salt or coarse freshly ground black pepper for sprinkling

Instructions

  1. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
  2. Whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and baking soda in a large bowl. Using your fingers, work in the butter just until the mixture turns into coarse crumbs with some pea-size pieces of butter remaining. Using a wooden spoon, stir in the buttermilk just until the dry ingredients are evenly moistened.
  3. Turn the shaggy dough out onto a very lightly floured work surface and pat into a ½-inch thick rectangle. Fold it in half once so that it’s 1-inch thick. Do this three more times to create layers in the dough. Then roll the dough out to about a 1-inch thick rectangle (or large enough so that a 3-inch biscuit cutter can stamp out 6 biscuits) using a lightly floured rolling pin: Place the pin in the middle of the dough and roll it forward, then put the pin back in the middle of the dough and roll it backward.
  4. Using a lightly floured 3-inch round cutter, cut out the biscuits (in one motion — do not twist the cutter), as close together as possible, and transfer to the prepared baking sheet leaving 2 inches between them. Gently pat the dough scraps together (do not overwork the dough), reroll and cut out more biscuits. (Note: You could just cut the rectangle into 8 squares, which will leave you with no scraps to reroll.)
  5. If you have time, put the baking sheet in the refrigerator and chill the biscuits for at least an hour before baking — they will be flakier. (Skip this step if you don’t have time.)
  6. Preheat oven to 425ºF.
  7. Use the back of a spoon to rub the biscuits lightly with maple syrup and sprinkle with salt or pepper to taste.
  8. Place the biscuits in the oven and immediately turn the temperature down to 400ºF. Bake the biscuits until they’re risen and golden, 15 to 20 minutes. I get the best results baking these on the top rack of my oven, but every oven is different, so play around with what works best with your oven. Serve warm, with butter.
  • Prep Time: 25 minutes
  • Cook Time: 20 minutes