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You won't believe how easy it is to make biscuits from scratch!

As a food blogger and avid cook, I like to do a fair amount of giving back to the community through food.  I just feel that the love I can impart through my cooking can indeed be passed on, like a prayer to those less fortunate, or those suffering through a loss or illness. Today I dropped off a meal for a family through Moms of Love and last week, I baked 3 dozen biscuits from scratch for our church’s homeless shelter.

Every Friday in the winter, our church hosts a men’s homeless shelter, which rotates through different churches and temples every night of the week. The men are given a place to sleep and clean up, a good dinner and breakfast and a bag lunch to take with them when they leave. My mom and I discussed sharing part of the meal preparation for this past Friday, and she was going to make some split pea soup, so I thought making scratch biscuits would be perfect.

Making biscuits has become a lost art since the introduction of refrigerated tube biscuits, but to me there is a huge difference. Not only are scratch biscuits much healthier for you because they contain lard and butter, you can make them with butter milk or soured raw milk (this is a great place to use your soured milk or extra whey if you don’t have any buttermilk) and even whole wheat. I wanted to get the most nutrition I could into these lovely little pieces of home.  Scratch biscuits are also easy as pie to make if you have a mixer!

The key to good biscuits is to handle the dough as little as possible and mix it up quick, roll it out and get it into the oven as soon as you can. Rubbing in the fat by hand or with a cutting tool when it is extremely cold, into a cool bowl will also help.  The fat is used to encapsulate the flour so that gluten strands do not form and the biscuits remain light and fluffy. Using very cold fat will help create a good pea sized crumble that whips up well with the buttermilk and makes a light and fluffy dream of a biscuit.

If you do not have buttermilk or soured raw milk (I keep two milk jugs in the fridge: the left side is soured for baking and the right side is fresh for drinking. There is never any reason to dump raw milk if it goes sour because there are so many things you can do with it, from making cheese or whey to using it in baking!) you can make your own approximation of buttermilk by adding in 1 tsp. of apple cider vinegar to a slight cup of milk and allowing it to sit for about 15 minutes in the refrigerator until it thickens slightly. The milk must also be cold to make a fluffy biscuit.

I used some whole wheat and some soft white flour in this recipe. You can use sprouted wheat flour or any combination of flours. It is not possible to make a soaked wheat biscuit unless you go through an extremely complicated and time consuming process of souring the flour and then dehydrating it again, so if you are concerned with phytates, simply use sprouted wheat flour.

Whole Wheat Buttermilk Biscuits

Makes 1 Dozen

1-1/2 cups unbleached soft white flour

1 Cup white whole wheat or whole wheat flour like King Arthur brand

2 Teaspoons baking powder

1/2 Teaspoon salt

1 Teaspoon baking soda

1 Teaspoon sugar (may be omitted-do not use honey or syrup)

3 tablespoons lard, well chilled (if you want to make these vegetarian, use all butter)

2 tablespoons butter, chilled

1 cup chilled buttermilk or soured raw milk

Preheat oven to 450 degrees and put the oven rack in the center of the oven. Grease a baking sheet with butter lightly.

Sift the flour, then sift together all dry ingredients in a large bowl. Using your fingers or a pastry cutter, cut in the butter and lard with the flour until a pea sized crumble forms.

Place the ingredients in the mixer and pour in the buttermilk.  Set on low and stir together ingredients until a sticky dough is formed. You may stop to scrape down the dough and stir again, but only until the dough is combined and comes away from the walls of the bowl slightly. If you do this by hand, it will take longer, but not by much.

Flour your hands, a rolling pin and a cutting board or your counter top. Turn out the dough and knead it gently, just 4 to 6 times. Roll out the dough in single direction strokes, first north-south and then east west until it is about 1/2 inch thick.

Cut the dough with a 2 to 3-inch round biscuit cutter, or a round cookie cutter. I used the canning ring of a narrow mouthed ball jar to make my biscuits.

Place the biscuits gently on the cookie sheet and do not press them down. Bake the biscuits for about 6 minutes, then turn the cookie sheet in the oven and bake for another 6 minutes for a total baking time of 12 minutes. Check them at 10 minutes and if they are golden brown remove them from the oven and serve with lots of butter!

Since I had to make 3 dozen of these at once, I made 3 separate recipes so the dough was easier to handle. I got very good at cutting in the fat and the last batch was the best. I think you get the “feel” for biscuits the more you make them and I have made another 2 batches since last week and each time they get better and better, so practice makes perfect!

This article is a part of the Hearth and Soul Hop-Volume 31, Monday Mania, Homemaker Monday, Delicious Dishes, Made by you Mondays, Tasty Tuesdays at 33 shades of green, My Meatless Mondays,  Glam Party, Hungry Recipe Swap, Just Another Meatless Monday,  Mouthwatering Mondays, FLB Tasty Tuesdays, Tasty Tuesday Parade of Food, Tempt my Tummy Tuesdays, Delectable Tuesdays, Made From Scratch Tuesday and Dr. Laura’s Tasty Tuesdays.