Brown Butter & Sage Biscuits

Every Southern household makes biscuits their own way. I would never say my way is the best and risk angering Southern grandmas across the state. But my version is flaky, tender, sky-high and just the right amount of crust on the edges.

Little known fact, I spent a year doing nothing but baking biscuits in Charleston. And while I don’t make them exactly the same way, they always make me nostalgic.

So when I saw my sage plant growing like crazy in the garden, I knew it was time to make these biscuits! Using herbs in my breads is really one of my favorite things – much like this rosemary focaccia or roasted garlic rosemary bread.

Ingredients

These brown butter biscuits only require 5 ingredients. Yes, FIVE! I know some like to incorporate other ingredients like sugar or shortening, but I don’t think those are necessary – let’s stick with the five.

• Self-rising flour. Biscuits are pretty much the only time I use self-rising flour. It’s how I learned to make them, and I’m not straying now. White Lily unbleached self-rising flour for the win.
• Unsalted butter. And plenty of it. Use a quality brand because it is so key to the final flavor.
• Fresh sage. Avoid dried sage here, use the fresh herb and chop it somewhat small.
• Salt. Still counts as an ingredient!
• Buttermilk. You can’t make biscuits without buttermilk. They will send you straight to jail.

Making Flaky Biscuits

Biscuits are not too complicated to make, but how do we get tall, layered buttery biscuits? There’s a few tricks to the trade!

Chilled ingredients are key. Keeping everything cold is critical for tall biscuits. Cold butter, cold buttermilk and then I freeze the biscuits before baking so everything is super cold before going into the oven. When cold ingredients go into a hot oven, it creates a steam that lifts the biscuits and makes layers!

Laminating the dough. I use a quick lamination for biscuits. Laminating dough means to create layers of butter and flour so that when the cold ingredients steam, they create layers. Think of the layers of a flaky croissant – that is a more complicated process, but the same theory!

To create our layers, we are going to fold our biscuit dough like a trifold letter. It sounds crazy, but trust the process.

Cold butter chunks. The last thing that we need to do is rub in cold butter chunks and leaving some larger pieces in the dough. Bigger pieces of butter will create more steam, and….more layers! This is why we chill our browned butter – we cannot achieve a proper biscuit dough with melted butter. It’s an extra step, but worth it for the flavor.

Slicing edges. Slicing the edges with a sharp knife will help to expose the layers. I only slice mine into 8 and leave the edges as they are for a more rustic look. But if you want perfectly sliced biscuits, after rolling into the final rectangle, trim the edges for a clean rectangle all around. Avoid sawing the knife too much to prevent crushing the layers.

Brown Butter

What is brown butter you ask? Brown butter is basically toasted butter as strange as that sounds.

When you heat butter on the stove past just the melting point, some of the water will evaporate and the fats will begin to toast, or brown, leaving a nutty, delicious flavor.

Don’t be concerned if the butter pops or froths as is heat it, that is the water cooking out.

I already talked about the importance of using cold butter, and brown butter is piping hot. So, first, let the butter cool to room temperature. Then spread it out on a plastic lined pan, making sure to add in all the flecks of browned goodness.

A thin layer of butter will not only chill faster, but it will help to incorporate the flecks of butter evenly so they don’t settle to the bottom of a tall layer. The plastic wrap makes the butter easy to remove and slice, but do NOT pour the piping hot butter into the plastic wrap. You will end up with melted plastic as part of your butter – and that is not good eats.