As a gluten-free home and needing grain free biscuits, this is one of the delicious items we were missing for quite awhile. No, you don’t have to miss out on these or good bread, pie, cookies, etc. Grain free biscuits are one of the two target challenge food items to get just right in the gluten free world with other being pizza crust. Rolling out biscuits the old-fashioned way can be successful but sometimes with spotty results. They will often come out like hockey pucks! This recipe uses blanched almond flour and not almond meal. If you want to read what the difference is between the two, here is a great article from thekitchen.com
After struggling for awhile, I discovered a very nice and easy trick to make your grain free biscuits consistently delicious and light. Biscuits the family will actually eat and there will be no leftovers. Yay! A win! Read on to get your easy tip to airy biscuits. If you need more help in how to convert baking recipes to gluten free to begin with, please refer to our easy Quickstart guide with free reference printable for your fridge.
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Drop Biscuits
Rolling out your biscuits and cooking cutting them out in beautiful biscuity-ness is part of the joy of making biscuits. There are many great recipes on the internet now versus when we had started out ten years ago on the gluten free journey. If you are struggling with the airiness and getting dense hard biscuits, you may want to adapt to drop biscuits. Yes, that is the simple trick that changed the biscuit world in our household.
By using the dough as drop biscuits, we are consistently enjoying this wonderful side dish and not throwing them out. What do I mean by drop biscuit? The dough is wetter and is not rolled out and cookie cut. Using a large soup spoon, it is dropped like cookie dough onto the baking tray. This allows the dough to have enough liquid to keep it from being dry and hard. By not rolling, the biscuits have a higher success track record of staying airy. Think of these as fluffy savory biscuit “cookies”. They remind me of the shape of large mound macaroons.
Grain Free Biscuit Recipe
- 1 C. Almond Flour (I use Kirkland Blanched Almond Flour)
- 1 C. Tapioca Starch
- 2 tsp. Baking Powder
- 1 tsp. Baking Soda
- 1 tsp. Xantham
- 1/2 tsp. Salt
- 1/3 C. Butter (softened to room temp.)
- 1/3 C. Milk or Almond Milk + a few TBS. extra
Dry Ingredients and cutting
Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Add almond flour, tapioca starch, baking powder, soda, xantham, and salt into a medium sized mixing bowl and blend together with a fork. Add the butter and use a pastry cutter to thoroughly blend the butter through the dry ingredients. I usually push and twist the pastry cutter until the dough has a rough sandy quality.
Final Fork Toss
Add the 1/3 C. milk to the dough and toss with a fork until the dough clings together. Take a minute to make sure the milk is fully mixed to avoid adding more liquid than necessary. If the dough is not all clinging into the wet dough, add extra milk a tablespoon at a time until all the dough is incorporated. The dough should be soft, easy to manipulate, and pieces aren’t crumbling off.
The Drop and Bake Your Grain Free Biscuits
Take a large soup spoon and scoop up a heaping spoonful. Place on ungreased cookie sheet with enough space around each to rise. Bake for approximately, 10 minutes until just golden. Makes approx. 2 dozen depending on size. I have 2 teens so mine are big.
Enjoy your grain free biscuits!
Serve hot with butter and honey. These would also be wonderful with freezer raspberry and/or strawberry jam. Store extras in the freezer in an air-tight container or bag.
To roll them out:
If you are not needing the biscuits to be completely grain free, you can dust a surface and the dough with brown rice flour and pat the dough into about a 1/2 in. thick layer evenly. Use a round biscuit cutter and gently cut and place onto a baking sheet. Only use enough brown rice flour to keep the dough from completely sticking to your hands when you are pattting the dough out and be gentle.
Delicious Grain Free Biscuits
Course: Gluten-Free CookingCuisine: EnglishDifficulty: Easy4
servings30
minutes40
minutesEasy and delicious, these drop biscuits are a family favorite comfort food.
Ingredients
1 C. Almond Flour (I use Kirkland Blanched Almond Flour)
1 C. Tapioca Starch
2 tsp. Baking Powder
1 tsp. Baking Soda
1 tsp. Xantham
1/2 tsp. Salt
1/3 C. Butter (softened to room temp.)
1/3 C. Milk or Almond Milk + a few TBS. extra
Directions
- Preheat oven to 450 degrees.
- Add almond flour, tapioca starch, baking powder, soda, xantham, and salt into a medium sized mixing bowl and blend together with a fork.
- Add the butter and use a pastry cutter to thoroughly blend the butter through the dry ingredients. I usually push and twist the pastry cutter until the dough has a rough sandy quality.
- Add the 1/3 C. milk to the dough and toss with a fork until the dough clings together. If the dough is not all clinging into the wet dough, add extra milk a tablespoon at a time until all the dough is incorporated.
- Take a large soup spoon and scoop up a heaping spoonful. Place on ungreased cookie sheet with enough space around each to rise.
- Bake for approximately, 10 minutes until just golden. Makes approx. 2 dozen depending on size.
- Serve hot with butter and honey. These would also be wonderful with freezer raspberry and/or strawberry jam. Store extras in the freezer in an air-tight container or bag.
Notes
- Made this recipe? Tag us on Facebook at cedarbirch musings
These are like crack for someone who can’t have sugar, dairy or gluten!! I can usually only get 7-8 biscuits out of my recipe with a large spoonful but man, they are GOOD!!!!
Wow, thank you for the feedback! Glad you like them. I have had success dusting the dough with rice flour and gently hand patting to “roll” out the dough to about 1 inch thick and using a biscuit circle cutter for more traditional biscuits before baking if you want to give that a try as well.
These are so good. I found the recipe less than 2 weeks ago and have already made them 3 times. I didn’t have any tapioca starch on hand so I used arrowroot instead, which worked very well. I’ve been looking for a good biscuit recipe for ages and I finally found a winner!
I am so glad to hear that you are enjoying the biscuits! Thanks for letting us know about the arrowroot. It’s always good to know what substitutions works.
These sound great and I like the look of the rough edges. I didnt think an almond flour biscuit would be good so I am glad to see this post! I’ll give it a try.
I am glad you are inspired to give it a try!