Ina Garten's Tip for the Flakiest, Fluffiest Biscuits Is So Simple

I remember waking up to my dad’s homemade biscuits on weekend mornings and immediately salivating at the idea of digging in. And while the biscuits looked utterly mouthwatering, my dad always appeared tired and disheveled. When I asked him why he looked so beat, he explained how he had to get up early to make enough biscuits for the whole family, sometimes rising before the sun even came up. 

I’m sure we’ve all been there—wanting to prepare a home-cooked breakfast feast for friends and family but shuddering at the idea of how early we'll have to set our alarms. If you love serving up smiles and sleeping in, Ina Garten has just the trick. 

Ina Garten's Number 1 Biscuit Tip for Easy Mornings

No more 4 a.m. baking start times for us! Ina Garten has several biscuit tips worth adopting (more on those below), but her best one for easy a.m. entertaining is to make your biscuit dough the night before, a trick she learned while running her specialty shop, Barefoot Contessa.

That's exactly what she does in a recent TikTok of a clip from her Food Network show. The night before a breakfast party with her friend Jeffrey, she makes buttermilk cheddar biscuits from scratch, up until it's time to put them in the oven. She places the prepped biscuit dough on a baking sheet and chills them in the fridge overnight before baking them—at a reasonable hour!—the next day.

More Top Biscuit Tips from Ina Garten

Use "Really Cold" Ingredients

But Garten spills even more biscuit-making secrets. Her cardinal rule when it comes to baking a perfect batch: “The key to making good biscuits is really cold ingredients,” she says. “Butter, eggs, milk.” Some people even go as far as freezing their flour, but Garten says that’s “a little extreme,” even for her. 

She says that it’s “incredibly important” to have super cold ingredients when making biscuits because “when the heat of the oven hits the biscuits, it hits the butter and the steam causes them to puff up.” That’s what makes those oh-so-delicious, light, and flaky biscuits.

Baking Powder Is Key

Garten also advises adding a tablespoon of baking powder, "because I want really light and flaky biscuits," she says. "Seems like a lot, but it’s really worth it."

Keep Cheese From Clumping With Flour

Garten loves Vermont or English cheddar for its extra sharp flavor, which will come through in the biscuits. Before mixing her box-grated cheddar in with the rest of her ingredients, she reaches for a small handful of flour, "just a tablespoon or so," so that the cheddar won't clump in the biscuits. She puts the flour and the cheddar in a separate bowl, mixes them together, and then adds it to the rest of her ingredients.

You Don't Have To Use a Biscuit Cutter

Once her dough is prepared, she rolls it out into a 1/2- to 3/4-inch-thick rectangle on her floured work surface. Instead of going through the trouble of using a biscuit cutter, Garten saves time by simply cutting them into eight equal-ish pieces with a knife, which she also flours to prevent the dough from sticking to it. "They came out really rough and very homemade-looking."