Sourdough Drop Biscuits Recipe (2024)

FAQs

What is the difference between a biscuit and a drop biscuit? ›

Drop biscuits have more milk or other liquid added to the dough than rolled biscuits. The dough is moister and cannot be kneaded or rolled; simply drop tablespoons of dough onto the baking sheet. Drop biscuits don't rise as much as other biscuits and they are always coarser in appearance and texture.

If your biscuits are falling apart…

If this sounds familiar, you could be adding too much flour to your dough without knowing it, disrupting the ratio of dry to wet ingredients.

Drop biscuits, or so-called “emergency biscuits,” were first noted in the Boston Cooking School Cookbook in 1896. It's an appropriate name because they can be made in a hurry, as the dough is dropped from the spoon onto the pan, rather than rolled or cut.

And at each feeding, you hold onto 1/2 cup of your original starter, discard the rest, and then add its same weight in water and flour. With this schedule, you'd discard almost a cup of sourdough starter every day. While a cup might not seem like a lot at first, it can quickly add up.

He asked if I remembered Quaaludes, a sedative-hypnotic that was all the rage in the 1960s and '70s. “We called them 'Stumble Biscuits,'” he told me, “because you'd stumble down the street and hit one car and then stumble over and hit something else and it was just happy and goofy.

“Scones are made with cream and eggs,” said Katina Talley, owner of Sweet Magnolias Bake Shop in Omaha, Nebraska. “They're sweeter, drier, and may contain fruit. Biscuits are typically made with buttermilk and no eggs. They're flaky, soft, and traditionally not sweet.”

But if you chill your pan of biscuits in the fridge before baking, not only will the gluten relax (yielding more tender biscuits), the butter will harden up. And the longer it takes the butter to melt as the biscuits bake, the more chance they have to rise high and maintain their shape. So, chill... and chill.

Keep the oven hot.

When baking buttery treats like biscuits, the key is to bake them at a temperature where the water in the butter turns quickly to steam. This steam is a big part of how the biscuits achieve their height, as it evaporates up and out.

Spoon flour from the container into the dry measuring cup and use a metal spatula or the flat side of a knife to level the flour even with the top of the cup. When the fat is cut too small, after baking there will be more, smaller air pockets left by the melting fat. The result is a baked product that crumbles.

In Britain, what Americans refer to as “biscuits” are known as “scones.” British biscuits are actually what Americans call “cookies.” The term “biscuits” in the United Kingdom typically refers to sweet, crumbly, and sometimes buttery bakes treats, distinct from the soft, bread-like biscuits found in the United States.

What are mourning biscuits? ›

Dr Gadoud said: “Funeral biscuits were biscuits served at or associated with funerals. They were generally two biscuits wrapped up and presented to each person attending the funeral or sent out with the invite to the funeral or afterwards.

They're Taller. Put on your science hat—things are about to get nerdy up in here! Southern biscuits made using flour made from soft red winter wheat are taller because of the lower protein content of the flour. According to Science Direct, the amount of protein is inversely proportional to the volume of the baked good.

Typical signs of food spoilage and mold include pink, orange, or green colors, white fuzzy spots, or sometimes areas that are darker with white areas on top. If you see any of these signs, I would recommend throwing your starter away and creating a new one.

If you don't discard your sourdough starter, it will grow too big and be unmanageable. Not to mention you will go through an unmentionable amount of flour.

I left my sourdough discard out at room temperature for a few days. Is it okay? As long as your kitchen isn't too warm (I'd say 78°F or higher) your starter/discard will be fine stored at room temperature for at least a few days without feeding. The flavor will get more acidic the longer it sits.

Drop biscuits have a dense, crusty, and crumbly consistency, whereas roll-and-cut biscuits are light, fluffy, and flaky. Since roll-and-cut biscuits hold their shape better and have a fluffier crumb, they'd work best for biscuit sandwiches and as a flaky topping for pot pies or casseroles.

Drop biscuits are just like classic butter biscuits, except there is no rolling required. Just scoop out the dough onto a pan and bake!

A biscuit, in most English speaking countries, is a flour-based baked and shaped food item. Biscuits are typically hard, flat, and unleavened. They are usually sweet and may be made with sugar, chocolate, icing, jam, ginger, or cinnamon. They can also be savoury, similar to crackers.

The term biscuit comes to English from the French biscuit (bis-qui), which itself has a Latin root: panis biscotus refers to bread twice-cooked. The Romans certainly had a form of biscuit, what we'd now call a rusk and, as the name suggests, it was essentially bread which was re-baked to make it crisp.