Ingredients
-3 cups flour
-4 1/2 tsp baking powder
-1 tsp salt
-1/3 cup butter, room temperature
-1 1/4 cup milk
Directions
1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees.
2. Add flour, baking powder, and salt to a bowl (sifting if you'd like). Mix well. Cut in butter with a pastry blender until the mixture looks like a "meal." Stir in almost all the milk. If dough doesn't seem pliable, add enough milk to make a soft, puffy dough easy to roll out. (Too much milk makes dough sticky, while not enough makes biscuits dry.) Round up on lightly floured surface. Knead lightly 20-25 times. Don't be too rough on your biscuits!
3. Roll out to about 1/2 inch thick. Cut close together with a biscuit/cookie cutter. Fit leftover dough together. Do not reknead. Roll out dough and repeat until there's not enough dough to roll out anymore. (I use the last bit of dough to make a funny looking biscuit. It's a test biscuit to eat right out of the oven!)
4. Place close together for biscuits with soft sides, about 1/2 inch to inch apart for biscuits with crusty sides on a greased baking sheet. Place in the middle of the oven. Bake for 10-12 minutes, until the tops of the biscuits are a light golden brown.
Make biscuits--except increase milk to 1 1/2 cups. Drop from spoon onto greased pan or into greased muffin cups.
Buttermilk Biscuits
Make biscuits--except, in place of milk, use buttermilk. Use only 3 1/2 tsp baking powder and add 1/2 tsp baking soda.
Bacon Biscuits
Make biscuits--except add 1/3 cup drained cooked bacon bits (about 4 strips) to flour and butter mixture.
Herb Biscuits
Make biscuits--except add 1/4 tsp dry mustard, 1/2 tsp crumbled dry sage, and 1 1/4 tsp caraway seeds to flour mixture. Also, try this recipe with your favorite herbs!
