Angel Biscuits: Heavenly Vintage Biscuits with a Surprise Ingredient

Biscuits and gravy is a favorite in my house on Sunday mornings. A southern and country staple that has never gone out of style – And why would it? It’s quick and easy, filling, and could easily feed a large family or group.

It’s not a particularly photogenic meal – especially the way I like to eat them – biscuits torn into pieces, smothered with gravy, and mixed with an over easy egg.

Although the two halves that make up this warm and comforting meal are equally important to get right, I’m going to focus on the biscuit half of the meal.

I have been making biscuits from scratch for as long as I can remember – not because I wanted to show off (at least at first). I am just not a fan of canned or frozen biscuits. Canned because they just don’t taste right and frozen because most brands readily available are full of icky preservatives and trans fats that I try to avoid.

Also, biscuits are REALLY easy to make as long as you follow a few hard and fast rules.

1. COLD wet ingredients are key. The butter and buttermilk have got to be COLD. Sometimes I even stick my butter in the freezer when I decide I am making biscuits – especially if the kitchen is on the warm side.
2. Don’t use a rolling pin when “rolling out” the dough but rather pat gently with your hands to the desired thickness (usually about 1/2 an inch).
3. If using a biscuit cutter DON’T TWIST but rather just punch straight through the dough and lift straight up.

Follow these rules and you’ll have a decent biscuit.

So, while looking through some of my favorite old church fundraiser cookbooks I noticed that several of them had a recipe for Angel Biscuits. Though the recipes all varied slightly they had an ingredient I had never used (nor even thought to use) in my biscuits – yeast.

Yeast in biscuits? I had to try it out.

Other than letting the yeast activate there wasn’t much difference than my normal biscuit making process.

Some recipes called for letting the dough rise, others didn’t. I decided to try both and found there was no discernible difference.

So how did they turn out?

Huge and fluffy. Just as a good biscuit should.

Because of all the leavening agents (count them – 3!) they’ll rise pretty much no matter what. I noticed that they rose just as well (if not better) than my go-to biscuit recipe even being handled more which makes them a good recipe for budding biscuit makers.

They also tended to be a bit sweeter than what I was used to but it worked for me. Especially when paired with salty and a little spicy sausage gravy.

Will I be making them again? You bet.