Breads Archives — Bless this Mess

October 9, 2018

The Best Homemade Buttermilk Biscuits

The best recipe for buttermilk biscuits that are extra tall, flaky, fluffy and perfect to eat on their own or piled high with gravy, butter, or jam.

All hail the perfectly buttery biscuit that has a million flaky layers, a crispy crunchy top, and a light and fluffy center. This, my friends, is one delicious homemade biscuit, and I’m so excited to share the recipe with you today.

I have a tried-and-true butter biscuit recipe that I use all the time. I use it so often that I have it memorized. That being said, I was on the hunt for a traditional buttermilk biscuit recipe. That’s the funny thing about loving to cook and bake – you’re always looking for the next best recipe. Why use buttermilk in a biscuit, you might ask? Well the acid from the buttermilk reacts more prevalently with the baking powder and it lends to biscuits that are extra tall and fluffy. This recipe is also unique in the fact that there’s an egg in it. Yes friends, an egg in a biscuit recipe. I found that it made the dough really nice to work with and made the biscuits extra tender.

These biscuits are perfection.

Tips and Tricks for Making the Best Buttermilk Biscuits of Your Life:

Use a biscuit cutter. No biscuit cutter? Use a knife and cut the dough into squares. A sharp edge when cutting biscuits keeps the flaky layers from getting mashed together.
Make sure your baking powder is fresh. Baking powder plays a big rolE in this recipe. If you don’t cook much, be sure to check the expiration date before adding it to your biscuits.
Use cold butter and cold buttermilk. The cold helps to form the flaky layers.
Pro Tip: use a cheese grater to grate cold or even frozen butter into Your flour mixture. Then you can finish working it in with a fork or pastry blender. It speeds up biscuit making a ton.
This recipe makes very large biscuits. You can make smaller biscuits by rolling out the dough to 1 to 1 1/2 inches thick before cutting, getting almost double the number of biscuits. Adjust baking time as needed.

What can I substitute for buttermilk?

There are a couple of different substitutes for buttermilk in baking. For each cup of buttermilk, you can use 1 tablespoon of white vinegar or lemon juice plus enough milk to measure 1 cup. Stir, then let rest for 5 minutes before using. You can also use 1 cup of plain yogurt or 1-3/4 teaspoons cream of tartar plus 1 cup milk.

Craving more? Subscribe to Bless this Mess to get new recipes, meal plans, and a newsletter delivered straight to your inbox! If you try this recipe, let me know what you think! Leave a comment, pin it, and don’t forget to tag a picture #blessthismesseats on Instagram. I love to see your kitchen skills in action!

The Best Buttermilk Biscuits

The best recipe for buttermilk biscuits that are extra tall, flaky, fluffy and perfect to eat on their own or piled high with gravy.

Author: Melissa Griffiths - Bless this Mess
Prep Time: 15 min
Cook Time: 15 min
Total Time: 30 minutes
Yield: 9-12 biscuits

Ingredients

3 cups flour
1 tablespoon sugar
2 tablespoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
¾ cup cold or frozen butter
1 large egg
1 cup cold buttermilk

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F and line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a baking mat.
In a large bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. Whisk together to combine well.
Use a cheese grater to grate the butter into the flour mixture. Then use a pastry cutter or a fork to combine the butter and flour mixture well (you can use a fork for the whole process but using a cheese grater first works super well – I recommend it). The goal is to have pea-sized pieces of butter mixed into your flour mixture.
Make a well in the center of the flour mixture and add the egg and buttermilk. Use a fork to whisk the two together and slowly bring in the flour mixture.
Stir until the biscuits just come together, taking care not to over mix.
Turn the dough onto a lightly floured surface and finish combining by lightly kneading the dough together.
Roll the dough into a 2-inch-thick slab. Use a biscuit cutter to cut out as many biscuits as you can and place them on the prepared sheet, 1 inch apart.
Re-roll the dough and cut more biscuits until you have used all of the dough, adding a bit of flour to your work surface and rolling pin as needed. You should end up with 9-12 biscuits.
Bake the biscuits for 15-18 minutes until the tops are very golden brown.
Remove from the oven and serve right away.

Notes

Use a biscuit cutter. No biscuit cutter? Use a knife and cut the dough into squares. A sharp edge when cutting biscuits keeps the flaky layers from getting mashed together.
Make sure your baking powder is fresh. Baking powder plays a big role in this recipe. If you don’t cook much, be sure to check the expiration date before adding it to your biscuits.
Use cold butter and cold buttermilk. The cold helps to form the flaky layers in between.
Pro Tip: use a cheese grater to grate cold or even frozen butter into your flour mixture. Then you can finish working it in with a fork or pastry blender. It speeds up biscuit making a ton.
These make very large biscuits. You can make smaller biscuits by rolling out the dough to 1 to 1 1/2 inches thick before cutting, getting almost double the number of biscuits. Adjust baking time as needed.

Buttermilk biscuit recipe hitting the spot? So might these recipes:

If the pictures in this post didn’t get you hungry, you much have just eaten. I can’t wait to make these again! When I was recipe-testing, I made 3 different recipe variations at once so we could compare them side by side. My kids had so much fun eating biscuits and telling me what they thought. This was the clear winner and I’m sure you’ll see why. Enjoy this amazing recipe from my kitchen to yours!

September 27, 2018

Perfect Pumpkin Bread (with or without chocolate chips)

This is THE Perfect Pumpkin Bread recipe made with or without chocolate chips. It’s sweet and moist but never gummy. You’ll make it over and over again.

I. Love. This. Pumpkin. Bread.

It’s the best recipe out there and one that you’ll make again and again. The bread always cooks so nicely with a firm crumb, a sweet little crust on the outside, and no gumminess. I like that this recipe makes two loaves (they freeze well, FYI!) and I like that you can choose to add chocolate chips or not. I normally will scrape half the batter without chocolate chips into one pan, stir chocolate chips into the remaining batter, and then add that to the second pan. It’s the best of both worlds for my family who is split down the middle when it comes to team chocolate and team no chocolate.

This bread is the perfect combination of sweet and spice with just the right amount of pumpkin flavor. It’s a dessert in my book, and oh-so-good! I can’t wait for you to make this so you can understand just how perfect it is. I dare say this is the best pumpkin bread recipe ever, but you’ll have to judge that for yourself.

This recipe is part of Pumpkin Week! A week I dedicate to all pumpkin recipes on the blog. I have SO MANY pumpkin recipes in my archives that it took me a little while to decide what I wanted to make this year. I realized that even though I have multiple pumpkin muffin recipes on Bless this Mess, I hadn’t shared my favorite pumpkin bread recipe. I’m so glad we could remedy that problem today. It’s a recipe you are going to make again and again.

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September 24, 2018

One Bowl Pumpkin Spice Muffins

One Bowl Pumpkin Spice Muffins made with whole wheat flour, rolled oats, pumpkin puree, and all of your favorite fall spices like cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves.

Long live allllllll the pumpkin recipes! I am a huge fan of these pumpkin spiced muffins and I can’t wait for you to make them, too. They are made with whole wheat flour and oatmeal, lots of pumpkin, and plenty of those fall spices that make your house smell amazing while they bake. These muffins are light, fluffy, sweet, and all around delicious. They make the perfect breakfast, after school snack, addition to a lunchbox, or little treat to eat with a hot cup of cinnamon tea. They also freeze well which means you can make a double batch and keep some on hand for busy times.

I also like that these muffins cook up great if you make 12 big muffins or 18 smaller muffins. I like the big ones for breakfasts or if I’m taking them to a social gathering with girlfriends. I like the smaller muffins for snacks and sticking in lunchboxes. You get to choose what works best for you – just see the notes at the end of the recipe on adjusting the cooking time according to size.

This pumpkin recipe is part of pumpkin week! A week that I dedicate on the blog to all things pumpkin – sweet and savory alike. I’ve done this every year for a few years now, and I enjoy it so much. I hope it inspires you to get in the kitchen and gives you a few more ideas on how to use pumpkin besides the classic pumpkin cookies.

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September 19, 2018

Sausage and Cheese Biscuits

Sausage and Cheese Biscuits are like a breakfast sandwich all mixed together: sausage, chives, and cheddar cheese all baked into a hearty biscuit.

I love breakfast sandwiches, but sometimes in the morning I don’t want to make all of the individual ingredients to stack together into a sandwich. That’s where this amazing recipe comes in! Sausage and cheese biscuits are like a breakfast sandwich, but it’s all mixed together. I love this recipe!

These biscuits are sturdy and rich thanks to sour cream and cornmeal in the batter, packed with goodies like chives, sausage, and cheddar cheese. The best part? You can make them ahead of time and reheat them in the oven. I love make-ahead recipes. I like to serve these for a quick and filling breakfast for my kids on school mornings (when I make them ahead) or as a side to scrambled eggs on the weekend.

This sausage and cheese biscuit recipe comes from my friend Mary’s new cookbook!

I’m so excited to share a new cookbook with you today. My friend Mary Younkin from Barefeet in the Kitchen has a new cookbook called The Weekday Lunches and Breakfasts Cookbook: Easy and Delicious Home-Cooked Meals for Busy Families. Seriously, who doesn’t need this book? It’s actually a companion book to her first cookbook, Weekday Dinners. I reviewed her first book and posted a fabulous One Pot Sausage, Rice, and Peas recipe here.

Mary’s book is everything I thought it would be and more. She’s included so many great quick, family-friendly recipes for lunch and breakfast (all of which you can use for dinner, too) and there’s a gorgeous picture for every recipe. She’s queen of the “cook’s notes” for every recipe which I find super helpful, and she’s also included gluten-free options and substitutions for every recipe (even the baking ones!).

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August 14, 2018

Double Chocolate Zucchini Bread

Chocolate zucchini bread that is rich, moist, and perfectly sweet with the addition of chocolate chips for good measure.

Chocolate zucchini bread is one of those fun bread recipes that is pretty much dessert, but because we call it a bread it’s ok to serve it for breakfast alongside scrambled eggs. Dessert you can eat for breakfast? Sign. Me. Up. I love this chocolate zucchini bread recipe because it’s simple, easy, sweet, and chocolatey, thanks to the use of cocoa and chocolate chips! I like that this recipe uses brown sugar (it adds a nice depth of flavor and enhances the chocolate) and that you don’t have to do anything special with the zucchini before tossing it in (meaning you don’t need to try to remove any moisture). It’s a tried-and-true recipe that you’ll make over and over again!

This chocolate zucchini bread recipe is part of zucchini week!

I’m celebrating all things zucchini this week by posting a zucchini-centered recipe every day this week. Some are sweet, some are savory, and all of them are delicious with zucchini as the star. I love this time of year and I hope to help you fully utilize and enjoy the zucchini bounty that is all around! My ducks actually ate and trampled all of my zucchini plants just as they were starting to blossom (I replanted but I’m not sure if they’ll have time to grow before fall hits), so I was without zucchini of my own. One little post on Facebook asking friends and neighbors if they had extra and I had a counter full just a few hours later. Hooray! Ask and ye shall receive! Don’t live in a tiny tight-knit community? Hit up the farmer’s market. Zucchini are a dime a dozen this time of year.

Recipes that use grated zucchini are great for using over-grown zucchini.

I like to buy or pick nice small zucchinis for stuffing or making “zucchini boats”, but for every small zucchini there’s a monster zucchini out there too. You pick and pick and pick them and then you turn around and a few are the size of a small boat. Grated zucchini recipes, like chocolate zucchini bread, are great for using up some of the larger-than-life zucchini. Just slice them in half (stem to blossom end), scoop out the pith and seeds (the seeds get hard and woody when the zucchini get large), and then peel them. Then grate as normal.

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June 22, 2018

Classic Zucchini Bread Recipe

Classic Zucchini bread recipe made with fresh or frozen zucchini, melted butter, and just the right amount of sugar.

I feel like a really good zucchini bread recipe is kind of hard to find. You have to get one that’s sweet but not too sweet (I think of zucchini bread as a dessert, don’t you?). It needs to bake all the way through without drying out the edges (a gloopy middle is so gross). And it needs to have just the right amount of spices to make it smell good when baking and remind you of your grandma. I’ve tried a million and one recipe for zucchini bread and this is my favorite because it’s simple, consistent, and delicious!

When zucchinis are on, they are ON, and this is such a great way to make a little treat to enjoy them. This recipe makes one loaf, but can be doubled and can be made with fresh or frozen zucchini. That means you can stash some zucchini in your freezer when they are a dime a dozen and then eat on them all winter long when they are no longer available.

How do you grate zucchini for bread?

If you are working with small zucchini, just slice off the ends and use the largest holes of your box grater to shred the zucchini – no need to peel or remove the seeds. If you are working with larger zucchini, though, the seeds start to get tough. I like to peel and remove the seeds from really large zucchini because the texture is better.

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April 27, 2018

Big Soft Pretzels

Big soft pretzels made from a simple dough, boiled, and then baked to golden perfection are one of our all-time favorite salty and chewy treats.

Few things are more delicious and welcoming than a big soft pretzel, and lucky for you, few things are as fun as making them, too. This soft pretzel recipe makes pretzels that are chewy, salty, and even better than the jumbo pretzels you can get at a basketball game.

Before I started making soft pretzels at home, they sounded intimidating. Why go through the effort of making a yeast dough, shaping it into pretzels, boiling it, and THEN baking. But then I tried it and I realized they were super simple, though they do have a few steps. And they are so delicious – they are worth any of the effort they might take. We’ve turned soft pretzel making into a fun activity at our house. I’ll normally get something rolling in the slow cooker (like a soup) and because dinner is out of the way, I’ll make pretzels with the kids when they get home from school. The effort of making the pretzels turns into a hands-on enjoyable time in the kitchen with the kids and we get something delicious to go along with our dinner. If my kids are wanting to bake pretzels in the summer, we’ll just start in the morning and eat them for lunch.

Simple, slow food is perfect for making kitchen memories with your people.

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April 18, 2018

Rustic Italian Bread

Rustic Italian Bread made with only 4 simple ingredients and some time, which makes the most amazing loaf of bread. The outside is extra crusty and the center is wonderfully fluffy and light.

A-maz-ing. That is the only way to describe this rustic Italian bread. It is dense and wonderfully chewy on the outside while being super soft and fluffy on the inside. When I am asked to bring bread to dinner at a friend’s, I always make this because it is stunning. There’s something magical about simple ingredients like flour, water, salt, and yeast working together with time. This bread tastes just like any good loaf of crusty bread you’d find at a high end bakery but you can make it at home.

You might be wondering – what’s the secret to making rustic Italian bread?

The answer: a sponge.

A sponge is a magical little concoction of flour, yeast, and water that you make the day before and let sit for 24 hours before making the bread. You simply mix those three things together in a bowl and let it sit. The sitting is what leads to the magic. It is then added in with the rest of the ingredients when you make the loaf of bread. The sponge adds this amazing (and hard to describe) flavor and also does something magical to the gluten. The texture of the bread is so soft and chewy in the middle while the crust is still dense and delicious. The taste of this Italian bread is amazing and the texture cannot be matched.

This Italian bread recipe will scare you a bit at first, but once you make it the first time, you will make it again and again. I love making “slow foods” like this. There’s something very therapeutic about taking your time with simple ingredients, especially when the end result is so delicious.

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March 28, 2018

Momma’s Jumbo Dinner Rolls

The best big and soft dinner rolls that my mom has been making for years. The dough is extra soft and tender thanks to the addition of butter, milk, and eggs!

I’m working hard at making sure that all of my favorite recipes are up-to-date and ready for you to make. Did you know that I’ve been blogging recipes for almost 10 years (where does the time go?!)? This wonderful recipe hails from 2009 and I’ve updated it and re-shot the photos and am republishing it today so that can see it. It’s one of my all-time favorite recipes and now it’s not hiding in my archives anymore.

This dinner roll recipe makes big fluffy dinner rolls that your whole family will love to eat. They just turn out well every time. My mom has a handful of recipes that she’s “known for” and this, my friends, is her nearly famous dinner roll recipe. She makes it for all the major holidays and family functions, and when she flies out west to visit all the grandbabies, we always request a batch of her famous dinner rolls. They are the stuff childhood memories are made of.

This is a classic dinner roll recipe, but the trick to make the rolls extra soft and buttery is melted butter, eggs, and milk in the dough. All three of those things lend to really tender dough. This is actually a great dough recipe for cinnamon rolls, but we’ll save that for another post.

I can’t wait for these simple dinner rolls to become a family favorite in your house, too.

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March 19, 2018

Mom’s Four Loaf Wheat Bread Recipe

Simple and fool-proof wheat bread recipe that makes four loaves of bread in one batch. This recipe comes from my mom, and it’s a keeper.

I have so many recipes that I make often that I haven’t shared on the blog. This year, I’ve made the goal to get more of my favorite go-to recipes out of my family cookbook and onto the blog so that you can enjoy them as much as I do. This recipe is one of those tried-and-true recipes that I’ve been making twice a month since my daughter was a baby. Now here we are, 10 years later, and I’m just now telling you about it.

This is my mom’s wheat bread recipe. It’s not a whole wheat bread, but a mix of white and wheat, which makes for a light and fluffy loaf of bread that is still brown and hearty. It’s a great middle for anyone who doesn’t eat whole wheat all the time! My mom has been making this recipe for as long as I can remember. It’s made with simple ingredients that I always have on hand and it just turns out well each time.

What’s unique about this wheat bread recipe is that it makes four loaves of bread in one batch instead of the traditional two loaves. I know that might sound like a whole lot of bread, but that’s my favorite part of this recipe. When I make it, I always think of the saying, “one for you, one for me.” I make this recipe with the intention of making warm comforting food for my family and also sharing that gift with others. This wheat bread recipes is meant to be shared with your friends and neighbors.

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