No butter bakes a better biscuit

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Back by popular demand, the recipe from our friends over at King Arthur Flour. These are the famously delicious, high rise biscuits from David Lee. They are almost too good for words!

We recommend using King Arthur’s Pastry Blend flour for this recipe. Its a “soft” flour, which gives the finished biscuit a tender texture that’s easy to handle. Nothing is worse than a tough biscuit or globby dough when you are trying to roll it out. This recipe is so light, yet sturdy enough to use in Strawberry Shortcake. It’s that good, friends.

This recipe does not require cutting in any butter (just melted butter to brush the top); all you do is combine flour with salt, baking powder, sugar, and heavy cream until the dough comes together. So easy!

Here are the ingredients:

2 cups (8 1/2 ounces) Perfect Pastry Blend Flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon baking powder
2 teaspoons sugar
1 to 1 1/4 cups heavy cream, enough to make a cohesive dough
1 to 2 tablespoons melted butter

Baking directions:

Sift together the flour, salt, baking powder, and sugar. Stir in enough heavy cream to moisten the dough thoroughly. You’ll probably use about 1 cup in the summer, 1 1/4 cups in the winter, and 1 cup + 2 tablespoons at the turn of the seasons. You want to be able to gather the dough together, squeeze it, and have it hang together, without dry bits falling off.

Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured work surface, and very gently pat it into an 8″ circle about 3/4″ thick. Use a sharp biscuit cutter (we use a 2 1/4″ cutter) to cut rounds. Dip the rounds into melted butter, and place them on a lightly greased baking sheet. Sprinkle with coarse sugar, if desired; this is a nice touch if you’re going to use the biscuits for shortcake.

Bake the biscuits in a preheated 425°F oven for 15 to 18 minutes, till they’re golden brown. If you have any melted butter left over, brush it on the baked biscuits.

 Yield: 10 large biscuits  (2 1/2 in)

Here is a tip we learned from the brilliant bakers at King Arthur Flour—go ahead and use a sharp edged biscuit cutter. While it’s easy and handy to use the mouth of a glass, King Arthur Flour advises that using a glass will crush the sides of the biscuit, causing it to rise less.