There's Only One Flour You Should Be Using For Melt-In-Your-Mouth Biscuits

Is there anything more comforting than a warm biscuit? From the moment you take a bite, its rich, buttery aroma wafts into the air as the delicate crumb gently falls apart in your mouth. Enjoying one with thick, creamy sawmill gravy slathered all over it isn't just an Appalachian breakfast favorite; it's Southern hospitality in food form, the quick bread equivalent of a tight, cozy hug. But the type of flour you use in the baking can make or break a biscuit. Blair Lonergan, recipe developer and creator of The Seasoned Mom (and who also has a forthcoming cookbook, "The Seasoned Mom: Easy Recipes from a Virginia Farmhouse Kitchen"), is no stranger to making perfectly tender biscuits. She recently shared her flour of choice in an exclusive chat with Chowhound. "I love a soft red winter wheat flour made by White Lily," she said.

While White Lily's flour didn't have the versatility to make it to the top of our ranking of popular flour brands, we did acknowledge that it's one of the absolute best flours for making biscuits. Baked goods made with White Lily tend to have a pillowy texture, which is exactly what you're looking for in a biscuit. It makes absolute sense that the proudly Southern brand would also make the ideal flour for a quintessentially Southern quick bread.

Explaining her preference for White Lily's soft red winter wheat flour, Blair Lonergan told Chowhound exclusively, "Compared to other all-purpose flours, it has a lower protein content, lower gluten content, and finer texture. These differences result in light, fluffy, and tender biscuits every time." That low protein content contributes most to the texture of the finished product. In general, the more protein a flour contains, the more gluten it can develop — and the more gluten in your dough, the chewier your bread will be. For biscuits so tender that you could chew them with your tongue, you'll want to stick with lower-protein flours.

For comparison, all-purpose flour is about 11.7% protein, which makes it versatile enough to use in all sorts of breads and pastries. The soft red winter wheat that Lonergan recommends peaks at about 10.5% protein and can go as low as 8.5%, making it an excellent choice for biscuits.

Flour isn't the only ingredient that affects a biscuit's texture. In addition to using White Lily flour, Blair Lonergan told Chowhound that there's more to a puffy biscuit than just low-protein flour and a leavening agent. "Shortening or lard give the biscuits great 'puff,' but don't have the rich flavor that you get with butter," she said. "For my Southern buttermilk biscuits, I use a combination of butter and shortening to get the best of both worlds." The reason shortening and lard contribute to a puffier biscuit is that they coat the flour and gluten in your dough and prevent them from forming stronger bonds, which leads to a more tender texture. Lard can also withstand higher temperatures than butter. This allows it to create more steam in your biscuits while they're baking, resulting in the puff Lonergan refers to. 

For more tips for cutting in butter like a pro, Lonergan also suggests keeping the ingredients cold to get a flakier texture. This also keeps the fat from melting too quickly and allows it to spread more evenly throughout your pastry. This also helps weaken the gluten formation in your biscuits. "My dad taught me to grate a stick of frozen butter on the large holes of a cheese grater, which makes it really easy to mix into the flour — no pastry cutter necessary," Lonergan told Chowhound.

Lastly, Lonergan recommends using full-fat buttermilk. "The acid in buttermilk tenderizes the dough, while the extra fat in the buttermilk keeps the biscuits moist and flavorful," she said. The acidity reacts with the baking soda to create more air in your biscuits, making them nice and fluffy. Buttermilk also contains casein, a protein that helps break down gluten. Following all three of these tips will give you results that are so pillowy, you can use any leftover biscuits as the base for an amazing strawberry shortcake.