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Learn how to make the best biscuits ever with this flakey sourdough biscuits recipe! This is one of the fastest sourdough recipes on the internet, and perfect for using your sourdough discard, if you’re not in the mood for waiting on active sourdough starter.

If you grew up on Laura Ingall’s Wilder’s Little house books, then the concept of sourdough biscuits is nothing new to you. In the book By the Shores of Silver Lake, Laura talks about cutting out biscuits, then putting the scraps back in the jar to feed her sourdough starter.

For a number of reasons, this leads me to believe that her version of biscuits is not exactly what we expect to today. The fact that the fat in our biscuit dough, which is what makes it flaky, would not be used in feeding starter among them. (if you want to learn more about feeding sourdough starter, go here).

But still, if you’re like me, you were always enamored with the Ingall’s ability to make things work, including using sourdough in lieu of baking powder.

Today, we know that using sourdough is a great way to make grains more easily digested, and unlock, for lack of a better term, some of nutrients for our bodies to use. So even though we have easy access to baking powder, it turns out the tradition of sourdough wasn’t just a necessity for self-sufficiency, it’s a superior method of baking.

This is one of the reasons I’m just an advocate of using active starter, fermented recipes, instead of quick, sourdough discard recipes which don’t give the sourdough a lot of time to ferment the added grains. Such as in this sourdough banana bread recipe.

However, with biscuits, this is a fairly dry dough, which makes bacteria in the starter less mobile, meaning that fermentation would be much slower. So if you’re making biscuits for breakfast, no need to let the dough ferment for an hour or more. However, if you’re making biscuit dough the night before, so that you have a quick and easy breakfast to pop in the oven in the morning, you will get some additional fermentation benefits.

Either way, it’s kind of a win-win. You get flaky biscuits, with some fermentation benefits, but no additional time cost compared to traditional baking powder biscuits.

A note on flavor

We absolutely adore these biscuits. They are flaky, light, and have just a slight sourdough tang to them. They are not sweet, but you can add 2 tablespoons of sugar or honey to the recipe if you prefer a sweet biscuit.

We are definitely a biscuit loving family, and love them in every iteration, such as these gluten-free baking powder biscuits for my celiac husband, and these ham and cheese biscuits. We make biscuits and gravy every Christmas morning.

But not every biscuit morning has to also be a gravy morning. These are perfect spread with homemade jam or jelly. My personal favorite is strawberry jam, my son really loved peach jam, my daughter’s favorite is raspberry peach jam, And my husband loves blackberry freezer jam. I guess we’re a jam family too, and typically have an assortment available since jam is so easy to make.

Ingredients for sourdough biscuits

The ingredients for this biscuit recipe are pretty traditional, with the addition of sourdough starter.

All purpose flour
Butter
Baking powder
Salt
Milk or buttermilk
Sourdough starter

I typically use active, bubbly starter. I tend to feed mine before I go to bed, and then make biscuits in the morning, taking my cup of starter out of the jar, feeding the rest again, and putting it straight in the refrigerator until I’m ready to feed it again.

A note on starter

You can use any flour-fed starter for this recipe. I typically use white flour, but whole wheat or rye can also be used.

I haven’t tried potato fed starter, but you could possibly also use that. To be honest, the only thing I’ve ever used potato starter for is sandwich bread. Maybe I should branch out?

How to make these biscuits

Start by combining your flour, baking powder, and salt in a large bowl.

A trick I’ve learned for making biscuits easily is grating the butter into the flour mixture, rather than cutting it in with a pastry blender. This makings cutting the butter fast, and it also create flat flakes of butter, which are important to creating that flakiness.

So your next step is to grate the cold butter over the dry ingredients, using a box grater. I grate about half of it, toss it with the flour, then repeat with the second half in order to keep the pile of butter from getting too heavy, and compacting back together.

When tossing the butter into the flour, be sure to use an upward tossing motion – you don’t want to pack the butter down so that it sticks back together before it’s coated with flour.

After the butter is mixed or cut in well, stir in your sourdough starter and milk, stirring until you have a cohesive dough.

Turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface. You can see in the photos and videos that I lined my surface with parchment paper. This was so I didn’t damage it with my biscuit cutter later, as it is not a durable surface. Feel free to skip that if your countertop is more durable than mine.

Sprinkle flour over dough, and use a rolling pin to gently roll down to about 1/2-3/4 inch thick.

Cut out into biscuits. I use a 2 1/2 inch round cutter. There’s nothing saying they have to be round by the way, you can cut them into squares if you want to. It’s a nice, rustic change of pace.

Place biscuits on an uncreased cookie sheet, about an inch apart to allow for even heating, and bake in a 350º oven. I you like crunchy bottoms, try baking on a cast iron pan. This is my favorite, by my daughter doesn’t care for the crunchiness, so like most things, that’s up to your personal preference.

Bake for about 15 minutes, until lightly golden brown, remove from oven, and serve.

Tricks for flaky biscuits

As discussed above, grating your butter is a great way to easily make a flaky biscuit.

But one that really feels like a cheat code is folding. Simply roll your biscuit dough out to about 1/2 an inch thick, fold in half, and gently roll the thick rectangle back out. Repeat twice. Since your biscuit dough is floured, it will stick together somewhat as you roll it back out, but there will still be some separation, which will allow them to spring up in flaky layers.

How to store leftover biscuits

These biscuits are actually really delicious reheated. In fact, They’re perfect, which makes them ideal for meal prep.

Store them at room temperature for a few days in an airtight container such as a rubbermaid container, or a ziplock bag, or freeze them in the airtight container for a few weeks.

To reheat, Place on a baking sheet in the oven, then start oven to preheat to 350º. By the time the oven is done preheating, they should be hot.

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