Southern Biscuits

Ingredients

• 2 cups AP flour
• 1 tsp white sugar
• 1 tbsp baking powder
• 1 tsp kosher salt
• 8 tbsp sweet butter
• 3/4 cup whole milk

Method

Heat your oven to 220°C. The success of these biscuits depends on one principle: cold butter stays discrete in the dough, creating steam pockets during the bake that separate into flaky layers. Warm butter loses that structure.

Whisk together 280g flour, the caster sugar, baking powder, and salt in a bowl. Cut the butter into roughly 1cm cubes straight from the fridge — if your kitchen is warm, chill the bowl first. Add the butter to the dry ingredients and use your fingertips to rub it in until the texture resembles coarse breadcrumbs. The pieces should remain visible and cool to the touch. This is butter-working at its core: you're distributing solid fat throughout the flour without melting it. A fork works if you lack the patience for your hands; it simply takes longer and you lose the tactile feedback that tells you when to stop.

Pour in 180ml whole milk and fold gently with a spatula until the dough just comes together — rough, shaggy, barely cohesive. Overworking the quick-breads dough develops gluten, which tightens the crumb and kills the tender, open structure you're after. Turn the dough onto a lightly floured surface and fold it over itself three or four times without kneading. This lamination encourages those crucial flaky layers without overdeveloping the gluten network.

Pat or roll the dough to roughly 2cm thickness. Use a sharp cutter (a mug rim works, but a proper biscuit cutter is cleaner) and press straight down without twisting — twisting seals the edges and prevents the biscuit from rising evenly. Arrange the rounds in a cast-iron pan so they're touching but not crowded; they'll rise up and into each other as they bake, creating soft sides.

Bake for 12 to 15 minutes until the tops are deep golden and the biscuits smell nutty. The sides touching the cast-iron will be crisp; the interior should remain tender and layered. Serve hot with butter melting into the warm crumb, or split and fill with ham and mustard.