Light and fluffy gluten free drop biscuit anyone?
My family loves biscuits and it has been one of the foods that they really missed since we went gluten free. I have an angel type biscuit that I adapted to be gluten free, but my family missed the more traditional type of biscuit.
Biscuits have not been high on my list of things to perfect gluten free though. This is mainly because I am not a huge biscuit fan. I did not grow up eating biscuits, we ate a lot of homemade bread, but I rarely remember eating biscuits.
And biscuits and gravy, well let’s just say I was dating my husband when I first tasted those. So, biscuits have not really been high on my list of foods to recreate.
My family however has really missed them, especially my twelve year old, so I knew I had to work on getting gluten free biscuits just right.
And once I got it just right, I realized that I really did miss them. Oh, these were so good fresh from the oven with butter. YUM!
I am not even going to admit how many times I made these, or how many of these I ate, the week I finally got these gluten free biscuits right. So delicious!
When I started working on creating a really good gluten free biscuit, I knew a drop biscuit would work best. Now, I know many true southerners would not consider a drop biscuit a traditional biscuit, but when it comes to gluten free biscuits, it makes them so much easier.
Gluten free doughs tend to be stickier and wetter and making these as drop biscuits gives you a much better, and lighter, texture than you get rolling the dough out.
I love making these in a cast iron pan because it gives them a nice crispy outer edge. I have used a cookie sheet and it works fine, but if you have a cast iron pan I suggest baking them in it.
These are great leftover with gluten free gravy, but if you want to serve them with butter, jam, or honey, they are best fresh from the oven.
Gluten Free Drop Biscuits
Gluten Free Drop Biscuits are a classic drop biscuit made gluten free.
Ingredients
- 1 1/2 cup brown rice flour
- 1/2 cup potato starch
- 1/4 cup tapioca flour
- 1/2 teaspoon xanthan gum
- 1 tablespoon baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar
- 2 teaspoons sugar
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 cup butter
- 1 1/4 cup buttermilk
Instructions
- In a large bowl combine brown rice flour, potato starch, tapioca flour, xanthan gum, baking powder, sugar, salt, cream of tartar, and baking soda.
- Cut butter into small chunks and cut into flour mixture until butter is mixed in and about pea sized.
- Stir in buttermilk until combined. Be careful not to over mix. You want it well mixed, but not over mixed.
- Drop onto a cast iron skillet or cookie sheet. This makes about 10 biscuits.
- Bake at 450 for 15-18 minutes or until biscuits are done.
Nutrition Information:
Yield:
18Serving Size:
1Amount Per Serving: Calories: 128Total Fat: 6gSaturated Fat: 3gTrans Fat: 0gUnsaturated Fat: 2gCholesterol: 14mgSodium: 205mgCarbohydrates: 18gFiber: 1gSugar: 2gProtein: 2g
Nutritional values are approximate and aren't always accurate.
I may be a transplanted Southerner, but I’ve picked up a few ebook traditional Southern recipe collections and there IS a tradition of a dropped biscuit. Cat Head biscuit is a dropped biscuit that looks much like yours. It’s generally in collections that include “chocolate gravy”. It may be regional to the Carolinas and East Tennessee, but the folk around here are definitely true Southerners.
Well that is good to know! I always thought a true biscuit was a rolled out one. And my kids saw chocolate gravy on a cooking show recently and now it is on their must try list, so I need to make some of it soon to go along with our biscuits.
Your kids will love you. It seems only the 40+ folk around here seem to know about it. When the mention it, it brings back lots of fond memories and rhapsodizing. I haven’t indulged myself or my family, but the recipes look easy and it’s a very frugal dessert.
These biscuits look more formed then dropped. Did you form them?
No I scooped them and then dropped them onto the pan, but it is a wet dough, so it flattened out when it baked some.
Hello Lynn,
Okay, so I think I remember reading that you live in the south? If this is true, and I don’t mean to sound stereo-typical but do you fry chicken? I’m looking for a gluten free chicken coating for frying it up nice and crispy. I trust your recipes, so just thought I’d ask.
Yay! Yeast-free. Thank you so much for sharing this. I will have to try this.
These were great but something went wrong. Too much liquid in mine so I had one LARGE biscuit! I did the milk w/ vinegar as I did not have buttermilk. Wonder if that was the issue? I used the same amount.
I have never used the milk vinegar trick with this recipe. I have in other recipes, but not this one. In my experience the milk vinegar is not as thick as buttermilk, so I would guess it threw off your liquid to dry ratio. If you liked the flavor I would try using less liquid next time or try it with regular buttermilk. I hope that helps.
Thanks much! Love your recipes. The tomato, sausage and rice is a new staple at our house!
Well…I’m going to experiment. I’m making soup tonight and wanted to make these biscuits, but I’m out of milk so I’m going to attempt to use almond milk. I did a little searching online and seems you can substitute it like milk “buttermilk” so we’ll see…hoping they turn out because, well, I love biscuits/bread with soup and I want to try these so bad. I’ll let you know either way how they turn out.
I think buttermilk is a little thicker than almond milk, so you might try using a little less liquid and add more if it looks too dry. It is easier to add than take away. I hope you enjoy the.
thanks…I read your comments to someone else who had said they used milk instead of buttermilk so I will definitely go slow.
They turned out good with the almond milk. I probably used about 1/4 cup or less of milk as opposed to buttermilk, but I just eyeballed it. They fell apart pretty easy, but they tasted really good. everyone liked them. Thanks for taking time to transfer recipes…and share them.
I am so glad it worked for you! Thanks for letting me know. I love to recreate our favorites to be gluten free and love sharing them with my readers.
I am new to gluten free so didn’t have all the ingredients you listed. I subbed all the potato starch, tapioca flour and brown rice flour with a Bob’s Red Mill gf flour mix which had those ingredients in it. I didn’t have enough of the mix so added 1/2 cup brown rice flour. I used kefir in place of the buttermilk and psyllium husk in place of the xanthan. Even with all these substitutions these biscuits turned out really good. Thanks for sharing the recipe. I plan on making your gravy to go with the leftover biscuits. Yum!
I am glad you enjoyed them and that the substitutions worked.
Must admit to tweaking this recipe 🙂 Large family so I doubled it – when I cut in the butter (soy margerine for us since we are milk free as well) It was really dry so I added an additional 1/4 cup per batch. Then I added the soy milk and the batter was a little to wet so I added 1/4 cup of sorghum flour per batch. The texture was a little on the grainy side – reminded us a little of cornbread. But the taste was spot on. I baked them on baking stones – only had so much room so some of the batter sat on the counter for a bit. That batter actually formed better on the stone and didn’t go quite as flat while baking. They tasted better than the first – I would recommend letting the batter sit for 20 minutes or so before baking.
I made these biscuits for dinner last night. This was an easy-to-follow recipe and the biscuits turned out wonderfully – light and fluffy, moist. Plus, since I was out of eggs, it was a perfect night to try these out. We easily converted the recipe to be dairy free as well by using Earth Balance Original Buttery Spread in place of butter, and I made a buttermilk substitute with lemon juice and Sweetened Vanilla Almond Milk. Thank you for posting this, I’m pinning it on my pinterest board and will definitely make again!
I am so glad these worked dairy free! I was not sure if they would or not and I had not tried them dairy free yet, so thanks for letting me know.