These homemade biscuits are soft and buttery with dozens of flaky layers. This biscuit recipe requires just 7 ingredients and they’re ready in about 35 minutes.
I originally published this recipe in 2017 and have since added new photos, a video tutorial, and more helpful success tips.
One reader, Marcia, commented: “Finally, a biscuit recipe that worked for me. I especially appreciated the notes which, in fact, had me change some things I had been doing. The detail at all levels, both visual and written, is very helpful. ★★★★★“
Another reader, Maggie, commented: “One of my favorite biscuit recipes! They are so consistently flaky and delicious, every single time! ★★★★★“
It’s quite serendipitous that this “side dish” may taste even more remarkable than the main event. No, no… it WILL taste more remarkable. Just look at the big buttery layers! Nothing can compete.
What Are Biscuits?
The term “biscuits” has different meanings depending on where you live in the world. In the U.S., biscuits are similar to a dinner roll, but are denser and flakier because they aren’t (typically) made with yeast. Since there’s usually no yeast and the rising agent is either baking soda, baking powder, or both, biscuits are considered a quick bread, like banana bread and no-yeast bread. In other parts of the world, people may consider these American-style biscuits to be more similar to scones, and what they call “biscuits” are more like what we call cookies.
7 Key Ingredients in Homemade Biscuits
You need just 7 basic ingredients for my homemade biscuits recipe:
- All-Purpose Flour
- Baking Powder
- Baking Soda
- Salt
- Cold Butter
- Cold Buttermilk
- Honey
With so few ingredients, it’s important to reach for quality ingredients and avoid any substitutions.
Baking Powder AND Baking Soda
Until recently, this biscuits recipe called for just baking powder as the leavening agent. In recent years, I’ve found that the texture, color, and flavor excels when using a combination of both baking powder AND baking soda. If you’ve always made this recipe using 2 Tablespoons of baking powder, you can certainly continue to do so! However, by reducing the baking powder to 1 Tablespoon and adding 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda, the biscuits brown more, have a flakier texture, crispier edges, and you don’t risk a bitter chemical aftertaste.
Success Tips for the Best Homemade Biscuits
After perfecting this recipe over the past 8 years and developing other biscuit recipes, let me share what I’ve learned along the way. I’ve made plenty of mistakes so you don’t have to. These tried-and-true tricks will turn your flat, dry biscuits into the best biscuits ever. And that’s a guarantee.
- Cold Fat: For flaky layers, use cold butter. When little pieces of butter melt as the biscuits bake, they release steam and create little pockets of air—this makes the biscuits airy and flaky on the inside while remaining crisp on the outside. It’s the same thing that happens when making these ham & cheese scones.
- Buttermilk & Honey for Flavor: Buttermilk and a teeny drizzle of honey balance out the salt. Buttermilk creates the most tender biscuit! I have plenty more on this topic in my Baking With Buttermilk post (including a buttermilk substitute recipe).
- Don’t Over-Mix: Never overwork biscuit dough. Overworking and over-handling biscuit dough will result in tough, hard, and flat biscuits. Mix the ingredients together *just* until combined. Dough will be crumbly; that’s normal.
- Flatten & Fold Method: The most important step of all is folding the dough together. Turn the scrappy dough out onto a work surface and flatten it with your hands. Fold, flatten, turn, and repeat.
- Don’t Twist the Biscuit Cutter: When cutting the dough with a biscuit cutter, do not twist the cutter. Press the cutter down into the dough firmly. Twisting it will seal off the biscuit edges, preventing the biscuits from rising.
- Bake Close Together: Biscuits rise up nice and tall when they are touching, pressed snuggly against one another in the oven.
How to Make Your Homemade Biscuits
Whisk the dry ingredients together, then add the cubed butter. Cut the butter into the dry ingredients with a pastry cutter, like when making pie crust or this savory quick bread, or pulse in a food processor. Cut/blend in the butter until you have coarse crumbles, like this:
Add the buttermilk and honey. Mix everything together until you have a shaggy dough, like this:
Pour it out onto a work surface and bring the dough together with your hands. It will be dry and shaggy with some moist spots. That’s all perfectly normal:
Fold & Flatten the Dough
Flattening and folding biscuit dough creates multiple flaky layers, just as it does when we make homemade croissants, rough puff pastry, homemade cruffins, mille-feuille, and croissant bread. This step will take you no more than 2 minutes and you’ll be rewarded with the flakiest biscuits in the world. First, shape dough into a rectangle, about 3/4-inch thick:
Then fold one side into the center:
Then the other side:
Turn the folded dough 90 degrees so it’s now horizontal, gently flatten, and repeat that folding process 2 more times.
After you’ve folded and flattened 3 times, flatten into a 3/4-inch rectangle once again, then use a biscuit cutter to shape into rounds. If you don’t have a biscuit cutter, you can cut into 8 to 10 squares.
Arrange close together in a cast iron skillet (no need to preheat it), or on a lined baking sheet. Again, make sure the biscuits are touching so they will rise nice and tall.
Before baking, brush the biscuits with buttermilk to help the tops brown evenly.
Honey Butter Topping
The honey butter topping is optional, but will set your biscuits apart from the rest. When the biscuits come out of the oven, brush with melted butter + honey. You use both ingredients in the biscuit dough, keeping the count at 7 ingredients total.
Serve your homemade biscuits with jam or homemade raspberry sauce, cinnamon butter, or biscuits and gravy—I love this particular recipe. Or a swipe of homemade honey butter really kicks it up a notch! You could also create delicious breakfast sandwiches with these breakfast sausages.
So Many Variations
I bake biscuits often, and use the same process and success tips when making all of my favorite variations including cheddar biscuits, everything bagel biscuits, and zucchini biscuits. I also make biscuit-topped vegetable pot pie and biscuit breakfast casserole. And you can absolutely turn these into dessert with my recipes for biscuit-topped berry cobbler and homemade strawberry shortcake.
I make these biscuits on almost a weekly basis, and what makes them a hit every single time is the combination of very cold butter and buttermilk. Additionally, the careful folding and flattening method helps produce dozens and dozens of flaky layers. Follow the recipe below closely.
Bake the biscuits in a cast iron skillet, which helps the edges crisp up beautifully. Additionally, use a pastry brush to coat the tops of the biscuits with a little buttermilk before baking.
You can use a food processor to cut the cold butter into the dry ingredients, but if you do not own one, you can use a pastry cutter instead. A pastry cutter is an extremely helpful baking tool.
Homemade Biscuits (Popular Recipe!)
- Prep Time: 15 minutes
- Cook Time: 20 minutes
- Total Time: 35 minutes
- Yield: 8-11 biscuits
- Category: Bread
- Method: Baking
- Cuisine: American
Description
These homemade biscuits are soft and buttery with hundreds of flaky layers! This biscuit recipe only requires 7 simple ingredients and they’re ready in about 35 minutes.
Ingredients
- 2 and 1/2 cups (313g) all-purpose flour (spooned & leveled), plus more as needed for hands and work surface
- 1 Tablespoon baking powder (see Note)
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda (see Note)
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 cup (8 Tbsp; 113g) unsalted butter, cubed and very cold
- 1 cup + 2 Tablespoons (270ml/g) cold buttermilk, divided
- 2 teaspoons (14g) honey
Optional Topping
- 2 Tablespoons (28g) butter, melted
- 1 Tablespoon (21g) honey
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 425°F (218°C).
- Make the biscuits: Place the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a large bowl or in a large food processor. Whisk or pulse until combined. Add the cubed butter and cut into the dry ingredients with a pastry cutter or by pulsing several times in the processor. Cut/pulse until coarse crumbs form.
- If you used a food processor, pour the mixture into a large bowl. Make a well in the center. Pour 1 cup (240ml/g) buttermilk into the well and drizzle honey on top. Using a large spoon or spatula, fold until it begins to come together. Do not overwork the dough. The dough will be shaggy and crumbly with some wet spots.
- Pour the dough and any dough crumbles onto a floured work surface and gently bring together with generously floured hands. The dough will become sticky as you bring it together. Have extra flour nearby and use it often to flour your hands and work surface as needed in this step. Using floured hands, flatten into a 3/4-inch-thick rectangle as best you can. Fold one side into the center, then the other side on top. Turn the dough 90 degrees, so it’s now horizontal. Gently flatten into a 3/4-inch-thick rectangle again. Repeat the folding again. Turn the dough horizontally one more time. Gently flatten into a 3/4-inch-thick rectangle. Repeat the folding one last time. Flatten into the final 3/4-inch-thick rectangle.
- Cut into 2.5- or 3-inch circles with a biscuit cutter. (Tip: Do not twist the biscuit cutter when pressing down into the dough because this seals off the edges of the biscuit which prevents them from fully rising.) Re-roll scraps until all the dough is used. You should have about 8–11 biscuits. Arrange in a 10-inch cast iron skillet (see Note) or close together on a parchment paper-lined baking sheet. Make sure the biscuits are touching.
- Brush the tops with remaining buttermilk. Bake for 18–20 minutes or until tops are golden brown.
- Remove from the oven. If adding the optional topping, whisk the melted butter and honey together. Using a pastry brush, brush the warm biscuits with honey butter topping. Serve warm.
- Cover leftovers tightly and store at room temperature or in the refrigerator for up to 5 days.
Notes
- Make Ahead & Freezing Instructions: Baked biscuits freeze well for up to 3 months. Thaw at room temperature or in the refrigerator, then warm up to your liking before serving. You can also freeze the biscuit dough. Prepare the dough in steps 2 through 4. Wrap up tightly in plastic wrap (plastic wrap is best for freshness) and freeze for up to 3 months. Thaw overnight in the refrigerator, then continue with step 5. Also, after step 4, you can wrap the dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate for up to 2 days before continuing with step 5.
- Special Tools (affiliate links): Pastry Cutter or Food Processor | 2.5- or 3-inch Biscuit Cutter | 10-inch Cast Iron Skillet (or Baking Sheet with Parchment Paper) | Pastry Brush
- Baking Powder: In 2025, I updated this recipe to use both baking powder and baking soda. I’ve found that the texture, color, and flavor excels when using a combination of both. If you’ve always made this recipe using 2 Tablespoons of baking powder, you can certainly continue to do so! However, by reducing the baking powder to 1 Tablespoon and adding 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda, the biscuits brown more, have a flakier texture, crispier edges, and you don’t risk a bitter chemical aftertaste.
- Butter: Cut into 1/2-inch cubes. Keep butter as cold as possible until you need it. I recommend placing the cubed butter in the freezer for about 15 minutes before you begin.
- Buttermilk: You can substitute whole milk for buttermilk if desired. However if you’d like the tangy flavor, which I highly recommend, you can make your own DIY buttermilk substitute. Add 2 teaspoons of fresh lemon juice or white vinegar to a liquid measuring cup. Add enough milk to make 1 cup. (You need 1 cup in the recipe, plus 2 Tbsp for brushing—you can use regular milk to brush on top.) Whisk together, then let sit for 5 minutes before using in the recipe. Whole milk is best for the DIY sour milk substitute, though lower-fat or nondairy milks work in a pinch. (In my testing, the biscuits don’t taste as rich or rise quite as tall using lower-fat or nondairy milks.)
- Cast Iron Skillet: If your cast iron skillet isn’t well seasoned, I recommend greasing it with a little vegetable oil or melted butter. Brush a thin layer of either on the bottom and around the sides. No need to heat the cast iron skillet before using, though you certainly can. Place in the preheated oven for 15 minutes before arranging the shaped biscuits in it.
- Flavors: Try my flavorful biscuit variations: cheddar biscuits, zucchini biscuits, and everything bagel biscuits.
Nutrition
- Serving Size: 1 biscuit
- Calories: 212
- Sugar: 2.4 g
- Sodium: 283.5 mg
- Fat: 9.7 g
- Carbohydrates: 27.5 g
- Protein: 4.1 g
- Cholesterol: 25.4 mg
Reader Comments and Reviews
Delicious. More importantly your step by step and pictures gave me the confidence to try these.
Thank you very much!
Great recipe! Now I am wondering what modifications would need to be made for whole wheat biscuits? Thanks
Hi Karen, we haven’t tested these biscuits with whole wheat flour so can’t offer much advice. The texture will change. Let us know if you give it a try!
Incredible! Have been looking for a recipe that approximated my grandmother’s – tender, flakey, light, and buttery. Also appreciated the simplicity of this recipe and how quickly it came together, and made it into the mouths of “family critics.” haha. Everyone raved about these. What a brilliant curtain call for the last bit of buttermilk. Thank you, Sally!
OMG! This is the first time I have EVER been able to cook biscuits and have them come out like BISCUITS!!!! Thank you so much for working out the details and including all the notes. I think it was putting the butter in the freezer for a bit while I was putting the dry ingredients together. I didn’t get the exact crumbles, but I used the food processor so my hands didn’t warm up the butter. And the folding!!! I am in the process of converting our family to all homemade bread products and this really helps!
Great recipe. They were quick to make and turned out soft and flaky. Will definitely make them again!!
I made these and added about a cup of grated sharp cheddar cheese and some garlic powder when I mixed in the dry ingredients. They turned out great and this has now become my go to biscuit recipe!
Love your recipes. Did this one and turned out fine, however I found I had to add more flour. Is the flour grams a typo? I could have sworn 2.5 cups was closer to 370G ( from a previous recipe using the same amount of flour:2.5)
Anyway I certainly am not trying to tell you it’s wrong! Just wondering if it was a typo bc it took me a little bit more flour.
Delicious though!
Hi Roy, we use the measurement of 125g for 1 cup of all-purpose flour, so the grams in the recipe are correct. However, often the climate/humidity makes a difference in some flour-based recipes, and sometimes we need to add a little extra flour to make the dough less sticky and more workable. So you probably did the right thing to add some more, especially since they turned out well for you!
Delicious!!
These tasted great, they’re good and fluffy. I’m in Colorado, a mile above sea level, and have found that the key to perfection leaveners-wise, is to use half as much. (If you’re in Denver, you’re welcome.) 1 TBSP was indeed perfect for me.
Sadly the reason I can’t give it higher than 3 stars is because I didn’t get layers. Did exactly as the picture, nothing. Just fluff. I have made lots of biscuits in my life, but always drop biscuits, and these just don’t have any different a texture. I know how to make croissants, and wonder why half the butter doesn’t get cut into the dough, and then a nice layer across the square, which will then get folded, and make truly buttery layers, or something like that.
I usually love recipes from this site- and while not a disaster, the whole reason I came to this one instead of my grandma’s drop biscuits, is because I wanted to make layered biscuits for my in-laws during the holidays. They always use those canned flaky biscuits, and I hate the fake butter taste and that greasy residue palm oil leaves in your mouth. I’m gonna try this again with a layer of spread butter, and come back. I think what these need during the process of folding is just a smidge of butter between each layering. See you in a couple days! I’ve got some fluffy biscuits to eat before I can do another batch. Haha.
I think I need much more flour or much less butter to make it work. the mix was too sticky to even work on. And when I finally did and baked them, the butter was even watering out. Something was not right.
Hi Camille! Was it a particularly hot day? Sounds like your butter may have been too warm and melted into the dough. Make sure to keep your butter very cold – if the mixture seems to be getting warm while you’re working with it, we recommend popping everything in the fridge for 10-15 minutes before continuing.
I made these today. They came out great.
I had to make a few changes. I substituted milk/vinegar for the buttermilk and a little dark brown sugar for the honey since I had neither. I also made them square-cut with my pastry cutter because I didn’t have anything round with a thin enough edge so as to not smoosh the sides of the buscuits closed.
Image posted in Twitter link here for anyone interested:
https://twitter.com/CelekDraco/status/1562956826987368448?s=20&t=dpQ3G_zmOU3o2LYFbICCIQ
Good Afternoon
Could this recipe be doubled? Thank you.
Hi Guna, for best results, we recommend making two separate batches.
Hi! Made these as written and they came out a little dry and crumbly. Any idea what I did wrong
Hi Amanda, how did you measure your flour? Be sure to spoon and level or use a scale to measure your flour in order to ensure just the right amount — scooping or packing the flour will give you too much flour and will dry out your biscuits. Over baking (even just a minute or two!) can also dry out baked goods. Hope this helps for next time!
I love this recipe; it works every time thanks to weighing the ingredients. I do take a short cut that makes it ten times easier. I freeze the stick of butter and then grate it and simply toss it with the flour mixture. This makes it easy to keep the butter super cold as I grate the frozen stick and then stick the grated butter back into the freezer for ten minutes before starting the recipe.
First time I ever felt truly satisfied and proud of my biscuits! Thank you for making me a baking success! I use gluten free flour and the biscuits are still wonderful…which is a tremendous feat when using gf flour!
I’ve made this recipe several times and loved it! I have a bunch of half and half I need to use up—could I do the buttermilk substitute with half and half instead of milk?
Absolutely!
Another Sally favorite in my recipe collection!
These were so good! I’ve never made biscuits from scratch before, and these came out beautifully. I took butter that was already frozen and grated it. I put it back in the freezer until I was ready for it. I put everything together by hand, using a pastry cutter and my hands, though not as much so I didn’t want to warm up the dough. I didn’t see the part about using a food processor, lol!
But, the part that really caught my eye was the comment about the baking powder! I’ve had that problem every time I made the Soft Oatmeal Cookies on this site. I thought it tasted too salty, so I would decrease the salt a little. Then I decreased the baking soda a small amount.
It was so frustrating, because I make these cookies on a regular basis, because my husband and my grown son love them. My son contributes fresh eggs, and I’ve upped my oatmeal and raisin purchases. Though to be fair I use a lot of oatmeal to make overnight oatmeal.
I looked up substitutions for baking powder, and the one that seems to be the best in baking would be 1/4 tsp baking soda to 1/2 tsp cream of tarter. It’s a two to one ratio. The other substitutes used liquids, such as vinegar, lemon juice, and buttermilk, lol! Have you heard of this?
Thank you so much for your website and all you do. This is the first place I come to for recipes. And much of the knowledge of baking I found here. You renewed my interest in baking. Now I just have to find someone to eat it, so it doesn’t all in my mouth!
Hi Patti, so happy to hear you enjoyed the biscuits! For the baking powder, have you tried using one labeled aluminum-free?
These are it! Best biscuit recipe I’ve tried! So appreciative of the folding instructions–this is key to a layered, fluffy biscuit! When I make scones, I freeze the dough and pop them into convection oven, on parchment lined pan, without thawing first. They are perfect. Would that work for these, as well? Thanks!
Hi Maren, we’re so glad you enjoy these biscuits! We find they bake best from cold (not frozen) – you can certainly freeze the dough to use for later, but we recommend thawing overnight in the refrigerator before baking – see recipe notes for details.
I made these biscuits for my daughter who was sick. She texted me with “best biscuits ever” and my husband who usually thinks biscuits are dry said these were light and moist. The honey makes them so flavorful. They were all gone within an hour. Thanks for the recipe.
Hi Sally! This might be the 20th recipe I’ve made of yours (seriously, you are the BEST), and first review I’m giving because I was so pleasantly surprised by how good these tasted, how well they turned out, and also – just EMPOWERED … because it’s the first biscuit recipe I ever tried. And OMG THEY TURNED OUT SO WELL! My family loved them. Your instructions are so helpful, the video was so helpful as well, and… I see more biscuit making… and also BREAD making… in my future. Thank you
We’re so glad you loved this biscuit recipe, Kimmy! Thank you so much for making and trusting our recipes 🙂
I lost my go-to folded biscuit recipe and was so happy to find this one a few years ago. Perfection! Your recipes are always spot on. Can’t wait for supper tonight. Rainy night with corn chowder and biscuits!
I haven’t made these yet but just watched the video. I made another highly reviewed biscuit recipe last week and ended up having to knead too much as the dough was very messy/loose. Biscuits did not rise and were “heavy”. Found this recipe and watched the video and willing to give it another try. This recipe used nearly half the flour of the other recipe. One question I have though about the butter. In the other recipe they had me shredding the frozen butter. Would this be better than cubing the butter like you did? I don’t know what you were doing to the butter after you added it. I don’t have that tool.
Hi Cyndi! Do you have a food processor? See step 4, that can also be a good way to cut butter into the dough. You can also grate the butter if you prefer!
Not an experienced biscuit maker at all, but the instructions were so clear and detailed that it was easy, and they came out fantastic. Love these!
These came out perfect! My husband loves biscuits and I love to bake but always felt intimidated by making biscuits. These were so easy and flaky. Thank you!
They are great turned out perfect. This is my new Biscuit recipe
Can you add cheddar cheese to recipie
Hi Sam, here’s our homemade cheddar biscuits recipe – enjoy!
This is the second recipe I’ve tried (other was the yeast dinner roll recipe) where I seem to need considerably more flour. I use a kitchen scale to measure, so it is stressing me out because I don’t know if I made an error, or whether it is related to humidity or something and normal. I just tried to go by the photos. I typically make lots of quickbreads and cookies, so rolls and biscuits are a new area for me.
Hi Mallory, heat and humidity can play a big role in how bread doughs come together, so don’t be alarmed if you find yourself needing to add a bit more during warmer months. Start by adding more flour a tablespoon at a time until it comes together to a workable consistency.
These turned out great, Thanks!!!
I really loved these. ♡♡♡♡♡ Gary, thought they were the best biscuits ever. I keep trying different things so he usually asks, recipe or experiment?
Will make these for a while.
I used whole buttermilk. I don’t believe I overworked the dough or twisted the biscuit cutter. Commenters on the Facebook page indicated my biscuits need to be closer together. That seems to be the main issue. ♀️
They didn’t rise hardly at all. I don’t know what I did wrong. Brand new baking powder – so I know that’s not the issue.
Hi Amanda, we’re happy to help troubleshoot. What type of milk are you using? In our testing, the biscuits don’t taste as rich or rise quite as tall using lower fat or nondairy milks. Make sure not to over-mix the dough. Over-mixing can cause flat, hard biscuits rather than tall and fluffy. Also, be sure not to twist your biscuit cutter. Twisting it seals off the edges and prevents them from rising. This helps them to rise nice and tall!