I love those dang old flaky layers biscuits you get in the can. I was so sad my biscuits never came out like that – until I tried enough different recipes and tweaks to get to where I liked it.

You know where this story is going. Then I met Kerry and he couldn’t eat buttermilk or gluten! Double dang. I decided to revamp my old flaky layers buttermilk biscuits to be low FODMAP-friendly and after a few tries, I’m ready to share this recipe with you.

These can easily be made without buttermilk or even fool’s buttermilk – just use some lactose-free whole milk without acidifying it like I do for this classic recipe. If you have Interstitial Cystitis, this is the way to go. You won’t lose MUCH flavor, especially if you’re pairing these with my Low FODMAP and IC-friendly sausage gravy.

For the rest of y’all, you had better just make some Fool’s Buttermilk for this. Nowadays, almost every grocery store is chock full of a bunch of different lactose-free milk and dairy products. But have you ever seen lactose-free buttermilk? Yeah, me neither.

Luckily, I googled it. I found a neato trick at Fodmap Everyday for whipping up my own low FODMAP lactose-free buttermilk in a pinch. I found I had to change this recipe time by about 5-7 minutes, but it could be my location and the humidity here or something. So here’s my version. It’s so easy and quick, we’ll be whipping it up while we measure out and process the other ingredients in my recipe below.

Now I will go through a bunch of pictures that show the dough-making and rolling process of these biscuits, talking about what stuff looks like and feels like at different points. Pretty sure this is how you do a recipe for a blog. Listen, this is Week One!

This is about the size I cube my butter into. I always cube up my butter first on some wax paper, wrap it up in that paper, and pop in the freezer while I sift and measure my dry ingredients.

Here’s the dough after we pulse the butter in – it looks like a raw crumble at this point, and you can still see bits of butter that are not fully incorporated in – perfect.

Now we lookin’ at the dough once you add in your “fool’s buttermilk.” Slowly add this ingredient, incorporating gently until it looks like this picture. You want it to be a little sticky, but not too sticky – to where you can roll it with a floured rolling pin (or wine bottle like I had to use this time) and it won’t stick MUCH to it, but it won’t behave like a dry, not-doughy crumble either.

Turning out the dough from the bowl I added the fake buttermilk to, I’m beginning to push together the dough with my hands to form almost a disc-like blob to start rolling out.

As you can see, I like to use a mixture of thin plastic cutting boards and wax paper taped to the counter to compensate for the fact our apartment’s kitchen counter has this weird tile and grout that makes rolling weird and bad. I like to think the grout really brings out the wine bottle rolling pin.

My friend Jessica Kornberg has won multiple awards for her pies (no, she is not contributing to this blog, it’s just me. Why don’t you go cry about it). I went to her crying when my rolling pin order was delayed from Amazon recently and she told me to just use a wine bottle. “I just like wine,” she was quoted as saying, in an exclusive interview with our organization (okay it’s still just me and Kerry).

In my recipe card below, I talk about getting the dough into a “rough rectangle” like shape for each of the six rolls we do to complete rolling these flaky biscuits. It definitely doesn’t need to look better than this and, luckily for me – can also look much worse and still be fine. I actually got kind of lucky wih the level of rectangle-ness we see here today, for me anyway.

I also talk about “folding over” the dough in between rolls. This is what that looks like. This is we build that tender, flaky inside of biscuit layers you dream about! Well, I dream about. We’ll repeat this process six times for Ultimate Flaky Layers. Check out the picture of the inside of one of these babies! Pure Flaky Layer Results.

Below, I’m using my biscuit cutter to push gently down straight through the dough.

Don’t twist that biscuit cutter! This is the worst thing you can do to this perfect dough you’ve been working so hard on. Twisting is fun and seems efficient, but it will “crimp” the dough and give you a tougher biscuit that doesn’t rise correctly at all around the edges.

In my recipe below, I talk about letting the biscuits “gently touch” on the baking sheet. The third picture above is what that looks like. It’s important to not space them out past this point, or they won’t cook correctly.

These biscuits are amazing all-purpose biscuits for whatever you want biscuits for. Soup, gravy, split perfectly in half for a breakfast sandwich. This is the biscuit. Tonight (yeah, we ate this for dinner with a side salad), I made Kerry some traditional country sausage gravy with lots of fennel and sage. But I personally love a really good biscuit so much with just butter and nice jam, to be honest. Glass of milk. If you know you know.

  • Before, brushed with less than a tablespoon of butter for all of these.
  • Wow what a glowup.

When I got these biscuits down to be gluten free and Low-fod compliant, Kerry really encouraged me to start this blog. This is post one.

Want my gluten-free lactose-free breakfast gravy recipe from these biscuit pics? It’s here – and it’s also IC diet-friendly!

"Fool's Buttermilk" Biscuits

“Fool’s Buttermilk” Biscuits

Buttery, flaky biscuits that go with everything. Truly the little black dress of Deep Southern cuisine. Perfect with breakfast gravy.

Print
Recipe by Brookey
5 from 1 vote
Course: AnyCuisine: AmericanDifficulty: Medium
Servings

6

servings
Prep time

10

minutes
Cooking time

30

minutes

Ingredients

  • 2 1/2 cups gluten free baking flour

  • 2 tablespoons baking powder

  • 1 teaspoon salt

  • 1 teaspoon sugar

  • 8 tablespoons (1 stick) diced, cold, unsalted butter

  • 1 to 1 1/3 cup whole lactose-free milk

  • 1 – 1 1/3 tablespoon lemon juice or apple cider vinegar

  • 2 tablespoons either melted butter or lactose-free milk or cream (to brush on top)

  • Hardware

  • biscuit cutters or a pint glass

  • rolling pin or bottle of wine

  • wax paper (for keeping chilled diced butter in the fridge / freezer)

Directions

  • If you haven’t already, cube up your butter, wrap it up in some wax paper, and pop it in the freezer while you prepare your other ingredients and preheat your oven. If you’re cubing up butter to use much, much later – fridge is fine.
  • Preheat oven to 425°. Make your fool’s buttermilk – stir together lactose-free milk and apple cider vinegar or lemon juice and set aside for 10-12 minutes, stirring occasionally (until it thickens) while you:
  • Sift together the flour, baking powder, salt and sugar in a large mixing bowl. Transfer to food processor. Add diced butter to dry mixture in food processor, and pulse 6 to 9 times until it looks like the crumbly butter flour mixture in my pictures above. Transfer mixture back into original bowl.
  • Add a cup of your “buttermilk” mixture, and stir to combine. If needed, add more slowly until it begins to look like the dough in my pictures. Stir with a wooden spoon or rubber spatula until the mixture comes together into a cohesive doughy, slightly sticky ball. Add a little more fake buttermilk if it’s not sticky at all yet.
  • Pop the dough out onto a floured surface, patting the top with a little more gluten free flour. Gently begin to roll the dough into as close to a rectangle as you can, about an inch thick. Fold it over and gently roll it down again. Repeat this process 6 times.
  • Roll out gently a final time – once again trying to acheive a rectangle-type shape, but don’t stress out about the shape or anything.
  • Use a biscuit cutter to cut out your biscuits, pressing straight down into the dough and not twisting at all. This is important – if you twist your biscuit cutter, the biscuit edges won’t rise correctly. If you have scraps you can mold together again with your hands and gently roll out a few more biscuits. These won’t be quite as tender and fluffy as the first you cut, but they’re almost as good!
  • Place biscuits, making sure they’re touching each other, on a baking sheet (lined with nonstick foil for easier cleanup if you want). Bake until golden brown, about 15 to 18 minutes, pulling out halfway through to brush with butter or lactose-free milk or cream to brown the tops.
  • Serve split or ripped into smaller pieces topped with low FODMAP, IC-friendly breakfast sausage gravy. Enjoy!

Well, there it is. Have a great time!