Epic Buttermilk Biscuits

I love biscuits!  I haven’t always loved them…when I was young, I thought they were dry hockey pucks.  Biscuits were hard, dry, floury, tasteless. Well, I was apparently being served the WRONG biscuits!!  As I tried more biscuits, I discovered they weren’t so bad.  Then, I went to Nashville.  Well, biscuits in Nashville are incredible, moist, buttery, flakey and scrumptious.  It became my mission to learn how to make great biscuits back home in Phoenix.  In the Nashville airport, I grabbed a package of the biscuit mix from the Loveless Cafe and it makes some pretty tasty biscuits.  They just didn’t feel like homemade…they were like a box of brownies: use the biscuit mix, add buttermilk and stir.  I found a Nashville Hot Chicken and Buttermilk Biscuit cooking class at our local Sur La Table store.  I had to sign up and luckily had a good friend willing to go with me.  The recipe they taught was mighty tasty and adaptable to many different biscuit variations.  The biscuits in this post were made with that Sur la Table recipe but baked in our wood fired oven rather than a traditional home oven.

I have been dying to try biscuits in the wood fired oven for ages.  I just knew there would be magic in cooking those tasty buttery treats outside with wood.  I had completely underestimated just how great they would be!  I love this recipe because it is quite easy and with the exception of the buttermilk I typically have all of the ingredients on hand.

We made pizza Friday night in our Forno Piombo oven, then Saturday night we made roasted potatoes and carrots for a side dish to our grilled steaks.  So…there was residual heat in the oven and some coals.  Mr. Fanatic reignited the fire with just a couple of small logs,  while I made the biscuit dough. He was able to warm it up and then cool it back down to around 450.

One of the keys to this recipe is keeping certain ingredients very cold.  Keep the buttermilk really cold and leave it in the refrigerator until you are ready to add it.  But the really important part: Freeze The BUTTER! Yes, you heard me right, FREEZE the butter.  I put the stick of butter in the freezer about 3 hours before I made the biscuits.

Combine the flour, salt, sugar and baking powder with a fork or whisk.  I let those dry ingredients sit while we waited to get the oven to approximately 400-450 degrees.  When Mr. Fanatic gave me the green light, I pulled the butter out of the freezer and grated on the largest holes of my box grater.  I tried to go as fast as possible so as to avoid the butter getting warm.  Then I gave a gentle toss in the flour to coat.

Next I made a well and added the buttermilk.  I stirred together with the fork until it was sticking together pretty well. However, it felt and looked drier than I would have liked.  So we slowly added a tiny bit more buttermilk in order to get it all to come together.  I got my hands a little dirty at the end to make sure it was all combined, but I didn’t do any traditional kneading of the dough. Once it was a ball, I turned it out onto the floured counter and rolled the dough.  **Note: I think I rolled the dough a little too thin this time.  I cut them with a biscuit cutter.  I have a set with many different sizes.  I find that I like smaller biscuits rather than large because there are more crunchy edges.

I was worried about lining the baking sheet with parchment as the original recipe recommends given there was going to be a flame in the oven. So I lightly buttered the bottom of the small baking pan before placing the cut biscuits.  Each biscuit got brushed with beaten egg. (Side note…buy your eggs locally. Find a farmers market. Find a farmer. Find a friend or the friend of a friend with chickens. Store bought eggs cannot even begin to compare!!  Look at how vibrant that egg wash is!)

The oven temperature was around 430-450 depending on the area of the when we slid the biscuits in.  When the biscuits on the side of the tray closest to the flame began to brown more quickly, the pan was rotated.  The time to bake at this temperature was about the same as baking in a traditional oven…around 15 minutes.  This could vary depending on your oven, the temperature in your oven and how close you place the pan to the fire and coals.  When they are golden brown and have puffed up slightly you know they are done.

Once the biscuits were removed from the oven, I brushed each one with a little melted butter and they were ready to serve.  We had bought some local honey at the farmers market so had sweet and then salty with the sausage gravy. Incredible!  We served them with a veggie scramble to get some healthy food in our delicious food-coma inducing breakfast.

You must put these on your next breakfast or brunch menu.  They are amazing enough to be served for special occasions or just a quiet Sunday with your own little family.

Please come back and share your reviews and comments after you have made these Epic Buttermilk Biscuits.  For more wood fired fun and recipes please follow us on Instagram @woodfiredfanatics and like us on Facebook!