The BEST Gluten Free Biscuits
Ok, I know. I’ve posted a biscuit recipe before and said it was the best gluten free biscuit recipe. But this recipe here, these are really the best.
I don’t know why, but one day when I opened YouTube, Google decided to show me a biscuit video from America’s Test Kitchen. I love that cooking show so of course, I watched. That was a super simple recipe and I was anxious to try it. They were ok, but pretty dry.
And you know how it goes: I watched one biscuit recipe and so YouTube continues to show me biscuit recipe videos. The next one that came up was actually for gluten free biscuits though. This recipe was unique in a couple ways, one being the addition of ricotta cheese. I immediately wrote it down and tried it a couple days later. Well, as usually seems to happen for me, the recipe did not work at all as written and I thought it was way too fussy. Drain the ricotta? No, thank you. I took the same general idea, but simplified it and corrected it and the result here is the very BEST gluten free biscuit. These are not paleo, they are not dairy free. Frankly, I wouldn’t even try to make these dairy free, but if you’re interested, I’ll try that for you if you ask in the comments.
Because we clearly love biscuits, I had to play around with the recipe a little bit and make this one variation for you. If you’re in the mood for a treat, mix in about a 1/4 cup dried blueberries at the very end of the recipe and bake as directed. Once the biscuits are cooled, mix up a little powdered sugar glaze (just powdered sugar plus water or milk and a dash of vanilla) until it’s the consistency you prefer and drizzle that over the top. Then you have your own version of “BoBerry Biscuits” served at the famous Bojangles Restaurants.
The BEST Gluten Free Biscuits
Ingredients
- 2 1/2 cups all purpose gluten free flour I prefer King Arthur Brand
- 1/4 tsp. baking soda
- 2 tsp. pink himalayan salt
- 2 Tbsp. granulated sugar
- 1 Tbsp. baking powder
- 6 Tbsp. cold butter
- 3 Tbsp. ricotta cheese
- 1 large egg
- 1 1/2 cups cold buttermilk may take a little more or a little less, add slowly
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Grease 2 large cast iron skillets or line a large baking sheet with parchment.
- Make sure the butter, buttermilk and egg are very cold. No need to freeze the butter, but don't get it out before you're ready to use it.
- To a large mixing bowl, add all the dry ingredients: flour, baking soda, salt, sugar, and baking powder. Mix well.
- Cut the butter into little bits and add this to the dry ingredients. Using your fingers, rub the butter into the flour until the whole mixture looks like gravel.
- Make a little well in the middle of the dry ingredients. Pour in 1 cup of buttermilk, the egg and the ricotta cheese.
- Gently mix these wet ingredients together with a fork until the egg and ricotta are well mixed into the buttermilk.
- Now begin to fold the wet and dry ingredients together with a rubber spatula. You will need more than the one cup of buttermilk, but add the remaining 1/2 cup slowly. Depending on how humid or dry your atmosphere is, you may need as much as 1 3/4 cups or as little as 1 1/4 cups. When the dough is right, it should look like the picture. Err on the side of too much over not enough. You can always fold in a little more flour, but dry dough will yield dry biscuits.
- Once your dough has come together, sprinkle a little flour on your counter or work surface and dump the dough on the flour. Sprinkle a little more flour on top of the dough and gently pat out the dough to about 3/4-1 inch thick.
- Cut the biscuits to whatever size you like. I use a 2 inch biscuit cutter. You will need to cut some biscuits and then pat the dough together into a ball again, pat it out again and cut some more. Repeat until you've made all the dough into biscuits. With the 2 inch cutter, you should get about 15 biscuits. You can, of course, make these bigger or smaller as desired.
- Bake 15-18 minutes or until biscuits are cracked a little on top and very slightly browned around the edges. I always use a sharp knife and cut into one just to make sure they're done. They will look dry, not doughy when they're done. See the picture for what the inside should look like when the biscuits are done.
