Buttermilk Biscuits with Fresh Milled Flour
Fluffy, pull-apart Southern biscuits made with 100% fresh milled flour. The overnight autolyse does the heavy lifting by softening the bran, fully hydrating the flour, and setting you up for a light, tender crumb that whole grain biscuits have no business being.
Servings 6 Biscuits
Ingredients
- 2 cups (220g) soft white wheat milled on fine setting
- 6 tbsp salted butter frozen and grated
- 3/4 cup buttermilk
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 tbsp granulated sugar
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 1/4 tsp baking soda
Instructions
The Night Before
- Mix 1 1/2 cups of the flour and 3/4 cup buttermilk until incorporated. Cover and refrigerate overnight to create the autolyse.
- Grate the butter and freeze overnight
The Next Morning
- In a mixing bowl, cut the butter into the remaining 1/2 cup of flour using a pastry blender or 2 knives until it resembles coarse cornmeal.
- To the autolyse mixture, mix in the salt, baking powder, baking soda and sugar until combined.
- Mix the autolyse mixture into the butter mixture. Add more buttermilk if needed to get the consistency you want.
- Gently knead the dough a couple of times and pat the dough out to 1/2" to 3/4" thick.
- Cut out biscuits with a biscuit cutter or knife, reshaping the remaining dough.
- Bake at 450 degrees for 10-13 minutes
Be gentle with the dough. Try to handle it as little as possible.
To keep from rehandling the dough, you can cut biscuits into squares.
Notes
- Don't skip the overnight rest. I know it's tempting to try to shortcut it. I tried. It's not the same. The bran needs that time to soften. The full 8 hours matters.
- Grate your butter the night before and let it freeze until morning. This is the move. Grated butter distributes through the dough more evenly than cubes, and keeping it frozen means it stays cold while you work. Warm butter melts into the dough before it hits the oven and you lose the steam pockets that create those layers. Do not skip this step.