Easy Drop Biscuits (no butter)

According to Dictionary.com, a drop biscuit is simply "a biscuit made by dropping baking powder biscuit dough from a spoon onto a pan for baking." What that definition doesn't tell you is that they are delicious, slightly crispy on the outside but tender and crumby inside, and that they make a great accompaniment to almost any dish!

Rolled biscuits will be a little more uniform in shape, and also have more distinct flaky layers. The dough is a little fussier to make, and there are multiple steps to follow, including preparing a surface, rolling the dough, cutting it with a round cutter, and transferring it to a baking sheet. I don't know about you, but I don't have the time or patience for that at the end of a long day!

All-purpose white flour yields a light fluffy texture, but we actually like our biscuits to be a little denser. So I use white whole wheat, which not only produces a slightly heavier biscuit, but also is a little healthier! Not that these biscuits are health-food by any means, but I always try to sneak in the goodness of whole grain wherever I can!

Beyond that, bread flours and pastry flours are also good and will result in very light, tender biscuits. Other flours will probably also work, but the difference in composition will affect the texture of the drop biscuits.

I'm obviously not able to test with every kind of flour out there, so I recommend experimentation if you have a particular kind of flour you want to use. I will say that my family did not care for using regular whole wheat flour - the taste was just a bit too nutty and the texture too heavy.

It's just easier! As a busy mom, I'm always looking for shortcuts. Butter will give you a little edge on flavor and texture, but I found a super-close substitute with mayonnaise.

Using butter adds the steps of dicing a stick of butter, making sure to keep it really cold (most of the time I have to put it back in the fridge for a bit because it gets too soft while cutting it up), and then having to cut it into the flour. Even if you just decide to use melted butter, you have the additional step of melting it. With the mayonnaise, all I do is squeeze it into a measuring cup, and then plop it in the bowl and mix. It doesn't get any easier than that!

Make sure your oven temperature is correct and don't forget to set the timer! Also, make sure that your ingredients are fresh, especially the baking powder. Don't overmix the dough - as soon as all the ingredients are incorporated, you should stop mixing.

Note that biscuits without butter will naturally be a little less flaky than biscuits made with the technique of cutting butter into the flour. I find that it is a no-brainer trade-off for me, since we all still love them and it is SO much easier to throw the drop biscuit recipe together.

You really can't, sorry! If you need to streamline the preparation required right before your meal, what you can do ahead of time is mix up your dry ingredients and store in an airtight container at room temperature, then mix up your wet ingredients and store in an airtight container in the refrigerator. Then all you need to do is combine the wet and dry mixtures, drop, and bake!

Alternatively, you could make the entire drop biscuit recipe ahead of time, refrigerate or freeze the baked biscuits, and reheat prior to serving. For more on that, see the 'Top Tips' section below!

Get ready for a science lesson - baking is actually very scientific! We depend on certain chemical reactions to make our baked products what they are. The difference between baking powder and baking soda lies in the acidity.

Baking soda relies on acidity outside itself to initiate the chemical reaction, and when that is present, the reaction is immediate. It is generally used when you want to create a chemical 'rising effect' with a dough. But we don't need that for these biscuits, although we want a reaction to occur over time as the biscuits bake. Which is why we use baking powder.

Baking powder comes complete with two acids, one that initiates a chemical reaction when the baking powder becomes wet (so it doesn't happen until you mix the wet ingredients into the dry), and the other that initiates a chemical reaction when it is both wet and hot (so it doesn't happen until the dough starts baking). This creates the 'fluffiness' inside the drop biscuits.

I'm sure this is a bit oversimplified, but hopefully you get the general idea!