Professor Butter Beard’s Sunday Biscuits
10 Biscuits
3 cups all-purpose flour (plus a bit for dusting and rolling)
3 Tbsp granulated sugar
1 ½ Tbsp baking powder
½ tsp baking soda
1 tsp fine sea salt
½ tsp freshly grated nutmeg
16 Tbsp (two sticks) unsalted butter, as chilled as possible
1 1/3 cup cold buttermilk
1) Place your two sticks of butter in your freezer for at least 10-15 minutes.
2) Preheat your oven to 400 degrees.
3) In a large glass bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder and soda, salt and freshly grated nutmeg. Whisk a few extra times – that is a lot of baking powder to incorporate.
4) Use a box grater to grate the chilled butter over the flour mixture. For each stick of butter, grate down to 1 Tbsp remaining (saving your fingers) and place the remaining 2 Tbsp of butter into a 10” cast iron skillet. Turn the burner on low to melt the butter.
5) Quickly toss the grated butter and flour with your fingers until incorporated, leaving bits of butter the size of small peas.
6) Make a well in the mix and pour in the cold buttermilk. Use a plastic bench scraper, or large spatula, to fold together the mixture just until it comes together as a ball of dough.
7) Flour your surface and gently roll the dough into a 6” by 12” rectangle. Fold like a business letter. Roll again and fold again. Finally roll the dough into a 4” by 10” rectangle. Flour a 1 ½” biscuit cutter and sharply cut the dough into 10 biscuits. They should be about 1 ½” tall.
8) Once the butter has stopped sizzling, place each biscuit, one at a time, into the butter and then flip it over (buttering the top and bottom of each biscuit). Once all 10 biscuits are buttered and flipped, place the skillet on the center rack of the oven and bake for 12 minutes. Rotate the skillet and bake for another 8 minutes until the biscuits are deliciously golden brown.
9) Carefully remove the pan from the oven and let it cool for at least 8-10 minutes before grabbing a biscuit!
