The Unexpected Flour You Should Use To Make Biscuits

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Skilled bakers outside of the Southeast may have trouble achieving the tender crumb they aim for in a buttermilk biscuit without damage to their reputation. According to Food and Wine, the type of flour available in your region is the main reason biscuits end up tough and chewy. While a high-protein flour with a higher gluten content is needed for chewy pizza dough, biscuits and pastries benefit from less gluten. Since 1883 Southerners have relied on White Lily, a brand of soft white winter wheat flour that contains less protein than the red winter wheat flour readily available in the rest of the country.

Although the internet makes most ingredients available for a price, chef Kelly Fields devised another option she shared in her cookbook, "The Good Book of Southern Baking." For her recipe, Baker's Biscuits, Fields swaps traditional flour for pasta flour which Food and Wine called "wildly clever." Pasta flour, also called "double zero" or "00" flour, is Italian wheat flour that's softer than all-purpose flour, giving the pasta a tender bite rather than a chewy one. Still a specialty item, pasta flour is found in most supermarkets and available online in smaller packages.

As for the other debates, Fields suggests grating butter into the flour and freezing the biscuits before baking. The steam released as the butter melts lifts the pastry, creating fluffy layers, per Baking How. And Atlanta's "Biscuit Jedi," Erika Council, bakes all the dough — biscuits and scraps — for zero waste.