All Butter Angel Biscuits

This recipe is a modification of the Southern Living Angel biscuits. They are moist and fluffy, yet beautifully layered, a perfect combination of buttermilk biscuits and yeast rolls.

I used the technique from Helen S. Fletcher of the Pastries like Pro blog to make more layers.

Makes about 24

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup warm water (100 to 110 degrees F)
• 2 1/4 teaspoons of active dry yeast (1 package of yeast)
• 1 teaspoon plus 3 tablespoons of sugar (I used turbinado sugar.), divided
• 5 cups all purpose flour (I used King Arthur all purpose flour.)
• 1 tablespoon of baking powder
• 1 1/2 teaspoons of table salt
• 1 teaspoon of baking soda
• 1 cup cold salted butter, cubed (I used Kirkland’s Grass Fed Cows butter. It is incredibly good.)
• 2 cups whole buttermilk
• 1/4 cup butter, melted and divided
• Flour for flouring the counter and for dipping the biscuit cutter in

Tools:

Large bowl, small bowl or coffee mug, spoon, pastry cutter or two forks, cast iron skillet or baking sheet and parchment paper. rolling pin, 2 1/2 biscuit cutter, pastry brush, small pot or mug to melt butter

Instructions

1. Stir the 1/2 cup water, yeast and teaspoon of sugar together into a small bowl or coffee mug. (A measuring cup works as well.) Let the yeast rehydrate and become active for 5 minutes. It is fine if it takes longer to use the yeast mixture.
2. Stir together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and the 3 tablespoons of sugar in a large bowl. Scatter the cubed butter over the flour and cut it into the flour with a pastry cutter or two forks. The mixture should be crumbly. I had some small pieces of butter that were left.
3. Add the yeast mixture and the buttermilk to the flour and butter mixture. Stir until the dry ingredients are moistened.
4. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and place in the fridge for at least two hours and up to 5 days. I placed my dough in a large plastic bag since I didn’t have room for a large bowl in my fridge.
5. Preheat the oven to 400 F.
6. While the oven is heating, flour your counter and pour the dough onto it. Push the together to form a cohesive block of dough. To make rolling out the dough easier, flatten the dough in 3 or 4 places with a rolling pin.
7. Roll the dough out to about 16” x 8”, with the 16” having a top and bottom. Fold the top and bottom to the center, leaving a 1/2 gap. Fold the top over the bottom to make a neat package.
8. Turn the dough 90 degrees, so the open side is to the right. Roll the dough out to 1/2 inch.
9. Dip your biscuit cutter in flour and cut the biscuit out as close as possible. Gather the scraps together and reroll them and cut out more biscuits with your biscuit cutter.
10. Place the biscuits with the sides just touching in the cast iron skillet or on a parchment paper lined baking sheet.
11. Brush the tops of the biscuits with 1/2 the melted butter. The biscuits freeze beautifully at the point, so if this is too many biscuits, freeze the biscuits flat that you don’t want eat now. Place them in a gallon freezer bag so you can just take out how many you want to eat later.
12. Bake the biscuits in the preheated oven (It is very important to have preheated the oven to get the layers.) until golden. This takes about 15 to 20 minutes. After removing the biscuits from the oven, brush the tops with the rest of the melted butter.

Notes:

When cooking the frozen biscuits, be sure and preheat the oven. It takes slightly longer to bake the frozen biscuits, but they bake up light and fluffy, with layers. The biscuits in the pictures below were frozen. They were also rolled from the scraps, so they didn’t all bake up straight.