this post was submitted on 31 Jan 2026
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How is it made?
Think savoury scone and you're most of the way there.
To add to this, there are drop biscuits and flaky biscuits (the southern kind, seen above). Drop biscuits can be like a much softer, more savory scone, but flaky biscuits are much lighter and layered, almost like a savory pastry often served with sausage gravy or red eye gravy.
since you brought red-eye gravy up, are your familiar with its preparation? I've read that it's often made by frying up a ham steak with maybe a little supplementary fat (butter, lard, or bacon grease) and creating a roux from the drippings. rather than milk, as might be done with sawmill/country gravy, the liquid added is strong black coffee.
this combination of ham, coffee, and roux has long fascinated me, as I imagine a real roller coaster of flavors there. however, I've not had the opportunity to order it in a real Southern diner, so I don't know if I'm off-base here, especially because, as I think about it, I'm pretty sure the first time I came across the dish as a concept was in an alternate-history novel in which racist South Africans time travel to the American Civil War and hand out AK-47s to the Army of Northern Virginia. In other words, citation very much needed lol.
Honestly, I'm probably not the best person to ask. I grew up in an area that was fairly rural, but very far north, so people used the term "red eye gravy" very loosely to refer to biscuit gravy made with strong black coffee. Ham may or may not have been involved, and often it was made with a roux made of bacon fat. Generally the biscuits where I grew up were drop biscuits. I've been vegan for more than a decade now so it's been a loooooooong time since I made it myself and I usually just used left over bacon grease, although my understanding is that authentic red eye gravy is generally made with country ham drippings, that's correct.
spoiler
Add flour, sugar, baking powder and salt to bowl. Take your very cold butter, and grate it into the dry ingredients using a box grater. Quickly work the butter into the flour mix with a fork or your hands. Add a portion of the milk, and mix until a shaggy dough forms, adding more milk as necessary (I did not use the full allotment). Turn out onto a work surface dusted with flour. Knead with your hands until you have a solid mass which does not stick to your work surface. Roll it into a rough ball/lump, then flatten it out into a rough rectangle approximately 1 inch thick. Fold one half of the rectangle on top of the other half, and then knead it back out to a 1 thick rectangle. Turn the dough 90 degrees, and repeat a couple times. I think I maybe did 5 reps. Once you have your final rectangle, cut out your biscuit rounds if you have the tool to do so. I did not, so I just cut the rectangle into thirds and then half using a chef's knife. Lubed a baking pan with cooking spray, hucked the bits of dough in, and set into a 425 degree F (~220 C) oven. Baked until the dough had puffed up at least twice it's initial size, and the surface was dry and unyielding to my finger (roughly 15, 20 min? I don't know, tbh, this was all feel at this point). Notably, the biscuits had not acquired much of any color other than their bottoms. I was worried about over cooking them or scorching the bottoms if I let it go until the tops were golden brown, so I brushed them down with butter and then hit em with a full broiler grill fro several minutes, until the coloration seen here was achieved. Reapplied more melted butter, cracked over some fresh salt, and voila.
here is the process that i used this morning. the other posters are correct that American biscuits are apparently quite different than what biscuits are elsewhere. as someone else shared with you, I've often heard that the closest European equivalent would be a butter scone, but I've also heard folks who care more than I about these things that that's also not exactly 1:1. in any case, it's a very lightly sweet and buttery quickbread. it has a crispy exterior, and a very soft, tender crumb interior, sometimes with distinct, laminated layers (similar in principle to a croissant). it is equally at home in both savory and sweet applications. this morning, I ate them with elderberry jam, while I served them as a side for beef stew this evening. I used it to sop up the remnants in my bowl. equally delicious.
Thank you!
The fairly high butter content and usage of baking powder kinda explains the texture you described but is also visible in the photo.
American biscuits are a form of quickbread. Chemically leavened, with fats worked into the flour.
Super simple in terms of ingredients, and fairly easy to make (though also easy enough to screw up).
You take your flour w/leaveners, then cut in whatever fat you're using; butter, lard, bacon grease, shortening, whatever.
Then mix in the liquid. It's usually milk, or milk products like buttermilk.
From there you very gently work the dough until it's sticky and can be formed.
If you want flakier biscuits, you roll and fold a bit, getting laminations and then cutting. If you want them soft and fluffy, do nothing but form them into balls by hand. In between, you roll them out to preferred thickness then cut. Cutting can be like in this post, or using a round cutter.
You then place them on a lightly greased pan. If you want softer sides, you place them close enough together to make sure they touch as they rise in the oven. For crusty sides, give them space.
Biscuits, particularly southern style biscuits, are an art form of sorts. The least rigid kind of baking there is imo. There's a ton of variation in textures and flavor.
Very good explanation, thank you.
Here's a decent example of a recipe for this kind of biscuit. Lots of butter. Work the dough as little as possible so it stays flaky. Some recipes call for folding the dough a few times to create more distinct layers. https://www.melissassouthernstylekitchen.com/fluffy-southern-buttermilk-biscuits/