These biscuits are excellent paired with a healthy soup or salad, since on their own they’re pretty unhealthy (you know, flour + butter + sour cream). We have made them every now and then when we’re craving a taste of some of my favorite biscuits ever, from The Stockpot in Norfolk VA. This recipe comes very close (in my opinion)! Most recently, we made them again this first week of January 2021 to use up odds and ends that were left-over from the holiday cooking season (rosemary, sour cream, sourdough discard, and country ham).
Lightly adapted from Bon Appétit’s Sour Cream and Onion Biscuits recipe (April 2020).
Ingredients:
- Fresh rosemary, chopped (c. 2 Tbsp). Keep a few leaves intact for garnish.
- 1 1/2 tsp kosher salt
- 1 tsp black pepper
- 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 1 3/4 tsp baking powder
- 1 1/4 tsp sugar
- 315 g (2 1/2 cups) all-purpose flour — OR –– 1 cup whole wheat pastry flour + 1 1/2 cup all purpose flour (total 315 g either way)
- 10 Tbsp chilled unsalted butter, cut into 1/2 inch pieces. (10 Tbsp chilled Crisco also works fine, but is not quite as tasty as real butter!)
- 1 1/4 cups (c. 300g) sour cream
- 2 Tbsp melted butter
- Flaky sea salt (Maldon’s)
OPTIONAL sourdough discard sub:
- Add 100g sourdough discard when you add the sour cream.
- Subtract 50g each from listed amounts for sour cream and flour (i.e., use 265g of flour and 250g of sour cream instead of what is listed above).
Instructions:
1. Preheat oven to 425 F.
2. Prep:
- Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
- Cut 10 Tbsp butter into 1/2 inch cubes; refrigerate until needed.
- Flour a pastry board or other clean surface and have extra flour nearby for kneading.
- Melt 2 Tbsp butter and have ready for brushing biscuits prior to baking.
3. In a large bowl, whisk the dry ingredients and chopped rosemary together. Dry ingredients are: 1 1/2 tsp salt, 1 tsp pepper, 1/2 tsp baking soda, 1 3/4 tsp baking powder, 1 1/4 tsp sugar, and 315g of flour(s).
4. Add chilled butter cubes to dry ingredients using either hands or pastry cutter, until pea-sized bits remain.
5. Make a well in the dry-ingredients-and-butter mixture, and add 1 1/4 cups (300g) sour cream. Mix using a fork until the dough barely comes together.
6. Knead and shape dough:
- Turn dough out from bowl onto floured pastry board.
- With floured hands, gently knead dough into a 8 x 4 inch rectangle.
- Fold dough into 3rds (like folding a letter to mail it), then rotate it and pat it out into another 8 x 4 inch rectangle. Repeat folding, rotating, and re-rectangling 2 more times (so you’ll have done this a total of 3 times). [Helpful video under step #7 on Bon Appetit’s recipe site.]
7. Working with the last 8×4 inch rectangle, cut the dough into individual biscuits:
- BA recommends cutting the dough rectangle in half lengthwise, then cutting each half into 4 squares, for a total of 8 biscuits.
- Warning: This method makes huge biscuits!
- Alternatively, you could try cutting the dough into 12 pieces (either 3 x 4 or 2 x 6), depending on how much your 8 x 4 inch rectangle errs from being these exact measurements.
8. Transfer individual biscuits to prepped baking sheet, brush each biscuit with melted butter, and sprinkle tops with flaky sea salt and some festive rosemary leaves, as desired.
9. Bake 18-22 minutes or until golden brown. I baked them the full 22 minutes, and possibly a little longer, until they were really golden brown.
10. Remove biscuits to a cooling rack. Serve warm.
And try to resist eating all of them at once! They are warm, buttery, and basically the missing link between scones and flaky biscuits. SO GOOD. The rosemary and flaky sea salt topping really sends the flavor through the roof.
Fresh chopped rosemary. 
Whisk together the dry ingredients. 
After shaping, folding, and cutting dough. You can see the layers in these individual biscuits! 
Fresh from the oven and golden brown.
