Sunday Supper: Biscuits

12:37 p.m. March 22, 2026

Every column in this series has been written from a place of hard-won confidence. I've made fried chicken enough to have the oil temperature memorized. My special cornbread-only skillet goes in the oven before I've finished mixing the batter. Sweet tea is easy to make with my eyes closed and no measuring.

Biscuits are different.

My husband makes biscuits better than I do. There. It's out in the world, and there is no taking it back. He is methodical where I am impatient, cold-handed where I run warm, and willing to fold the dough with the kind of focused care that good biscuits require, which I have historically been unwilling to give them. His biscuits come out of the cast-iron skillet tall and layered and pulled apart in sheets, and the family comes to the table faster for biscuits than for almost anything else.

What follows is part my voice and part his method because the best kitchen is one where you're honest about who does what best, and you learn from them accordingly.

Why Biscuits Are Hard to Get Right

A biscuit is a study in contradiction. The ingredient list is short, consisting of flour, fat, liquid, a little leavening, a little salt. None of the ingredients requires a specialty store trip. And yet biscuits have humbled confident cooks for generations, producing results that range from transcendent to hockey puck with no obvious explanation for the difference.

The explanation, once you understand it, is almost entirely about technique and temperature. Biscuit dough does not want to be worked. Heat is its enemy at every stage until the moment it enters the oven. The fat needs to stay cold so it melts in the oven rather than before it, creating steam that pushes the layers apart. The mixing needs to stop the moment everything comes together. The less you handle the dough, the better the biscuit, and for people like me, who cook by instinct and feel that restraint is genuinely difficult to practice.

The Flour

Southern biscuit tradition points firmly toward soft winter wheat flour, and White Lily is the name most associated with that tradition. Milled from soft red winter wheat grown primarily in the South, it has a lower protein content than all-purpose flour, which means less gluten development and a more tender crumb. Many lifelong Southern bakers will not consider using anything else.

That said, White Lily is not always easy to find outside the South, and all-purpose flour makes perfectly good biscuits in the hands of someone who knows what they're doing. The difference is real but not insurmountable. If you have White Lily, use it. If you don't, don't let the absence stop you from making biscuits. You can use a good, unbleached all-purpose flour and focus on your technique.

Self-rising flour is another common choice, particularly in older recipes. It has baking powder and salt already mixed in, which simplifies the process and produces a reliable result. Just know that you're giving up some control over your leavening ratios, and if your self-rising flour has been sitting in the pantry for more than a few months, the leavening may have weakened enough to affect your rise. When in doubt, use plain flour and add your own.

The Fat

This is where kitchens divide, and where all three camps have something legitimate to say.

Lard is the oldest tradition and, for many bakers, still the gold standard. Rendered pork fat has a higher fat content and lower water content than butter, which means it produces a biscuit with an exceptionally tender, almost melt-in-your-mouth crumb. The flavor is subtle, and the texture is unlike that of any other fat. If you have good lard and want to make a biscuit your great-grandmother would recognize, this is the path. Keep it cold.

Butter is my husband's choice, and the results speak for themselves. The key - and he will tell you this with the calm certainty of someone who has earned the right - is that the butter must be extremely cold. Not cool. Not softened slightly. Cold in the freezer until he is ready to grate it directly into the flour using a box grater. It sounds fussy until you see what it does to the finished biscuit.

When cold butter hits a 450-degree oven, the water in it instantly turns to steam, pushing the layers of dough apart. That is a part of the science behind a tall, flaky biscuit, and warm butter simply cannot do it.

Shortening produces a biscuit that is tender and high-rising, with a neutral flavor and a soft, even crumb. For decades, it was the dominant choice in American home kitchens. Crisco appeared in 1911 and quickly became the fat of the biscuit-making generation that taught most of us everything we know about cooking. The biscuits it makes are genuinely good, familiar in the best sense of the word, and more forgiving of temperature than butter. If that is what your family has always used, there is no reason to change.

Whatever fat you choose, the principle is the same: keep it cold, work it into the flour quickly, and stop before the mixture gets warm.

The Liquid

Buttermilk. Full stop, and for the same reason, it belongs in cornbread. The acidity reacts with the baking soda in the dough to create lift, and the flavor it contributes is essential to a proper Southern biscuit. Whole milk will work in an emergency. Water will not produce the same result. Buttermilk is worth buying specifically for biscuit day.

Add it cold, all at once. Stir just until the dough comes together. It will be a shaggy, rough mass – exactly what you want at this stage. Smooth dough is overworked dough, and overworked dough makes tough biscuits. Stop working the dough the moment it holds together.

The Methods

There is more than one right way to make a biscuit, and the method you choose should match what you want the finished biscuit to be.
The fold-and-layer method is what happens in this house, and it is what produces the kind of biscuit people pull apart at the table to see the layers inside. After the dough comes together, turn it out onto a lightly floured surface and pat it gently into a rough rectangle.

You do not need a rolling pin - just the hands the good Lord gave you. Fold it in thirds like a letter, pat it down, rotate it, and fold again. Repeat these folds three or four times. Each fold creates distinct layers of fat and dough that separate in the oven into the flaky sheets that make a biscuit worth talking about. Handle it gently throughout. The moment it starts feeling warm, you have gone too far.

The cut-in method is the classic approach. The fat is worked into flour until it resembles coarse crumbs, liquid is added, the dough is patted out, and cut into rounds with a biscuit cutter. Press straight down with the cutter and do not twist. Twisting seals the edges and prevents a full rise. The cut-in method produces a rounder, more uniform biscuit with a tender crumb that is less layered than the fold method but no less satisfying.

Drop biscuits are the most forgiving of the three and deserve more respect than they typically receive. It’s a wetter dough with more liquid than a pat-out biscuit, and dropped by spoonfuls directly onto the pan produces a biscuit with a craggy, irregular top and edges that crisp in the oven while the center stays soft. No rolling, no folding, no cutter required. For a weeknight when biscuits are wanted but time is short, a drop biscuit made with good ingredients and a hot oven is nothing to apologize for. This is my preferred method!

The Pan and the Heat

Our choice of pans is always cast iron. A well-seasoned skillet, preheated in a 450-degree oven while you finish the dough. Place the biscuits touching with their sides pressed against each other in the pan. This is not accidental. Biscuits baked touching rise upward because they have nowhere else to go, producing taller biscuits with soft sides. Biscuits baked with space between them spread slightly and develop a crust on all sides, which is a different but also valid result depending on what you want.

450 degrees is not a suggestion. A hot oven quickly sets the exterior, traps the steam inside, and drives the rise. Biscuits baked at a moderate temperature cook through, but don't achieve the same lift or the golden-brown top that signals they are ready. Twelve to fourteen minutes at 450 degrees is typically all it takes. Keep an eye on them, not the clock, and pull them when the tops are deep gold.

A Few Last Words

When I asked my husband if he had anything to add to this column, he thought about it for a moment and said: Don't overthink it, don't overwork it, and don't open the oven door for twelve minutes.

He has been making biscuits long enough to say that with authority, and the family has been eating them long enough to know he's right.

Make a batch this Sunday. If they don't turn out the way you want, make another batch next Sunday. Biscuits reward repetition more than almost anything else in the kitchen. Each time you make them, your hands learn a little more about when to stop, and the biscuits get a little better for it.

And if someone in your house turns out to make them better than you do, let them. Set the table, make the gravy, and count yourself fortunate like I do!

Lard, butter, or shortening? White Lily or all-purpose? Do you fold for layers or keep it simple? Is there someone in your household who makes them better than everyone else? Email larder@mcobserver.news or message us on Facebook.