A happy accident a few weeks ago led to yet another change in my gluten free drop biscuits recipe. I ran out of soy flour and added an additional 1/2 c. of cornstarch to make up for the shortfall. The result. . . fluffy, tender biscuits that I would put up against anyone’s gluten filled biscuit.
These biscuits freeze really well too. I usually make a batch on Saturday morning, cook 6 for our breakfast and then freeze the remaining 10 biscuits in two pans. These pans eventually find their way into our oven during the week. Just bake for 30 minutes while you get dressed, and breakfast is done.
Light and Fluffy Gluten Free Biscuits
(Yield: 16 large biscuits)
1 1/2 c. brown rice flour
2 c. corn starch*
1/2 c. soy flour or sorghum flour
2 tsp. baking powder
2 tsp. salt
1 1/2 tsp. baking soda
2 tsp. xanthan gum
1 stick of butter* (chilled in the freezer)
1 1/4 c. soy milk*
1 1/4 c. water
1 Tbsp. cider vinegar*
1 egg, beaten (or the equivalent amount of your favorite egg replacement)
1. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.
2. In a large mixing bowl thoroughly combine the flours, baking powder, salt, baking soda, and xanthan gum.
3. Grate the butter into the flour using the small holed side of a box grater. Mix the butter into the flour so that there are no large balls of grated butter.
4. Add the soy milk, water, vinegar and beaten egg to the flour and stir until the dry and liquid ingredients are combined.
5. Using a large spoon, drop the dough onto a greased pan to make 16 biscuits. Cook at 350 degrees for 15 minutes or until golden brown.
Cook’s Notes:
1. If you’re not vegan or dairy free, feel free to use 1 c. buttermilk in place of the soy milk and vinegar. If you’re allergic to soy, try using your usual milk substitute and keep the vinegar in the recipe.
2. You may substitute potato starch or tapioca flour for the cornstarch.
3. 1 stick of butter = 8 Tbsp. = 1/2 c. = 1/4 lb. = 115 grams
4. Earth Balance Buttery Sticks should work if you need this to be casein free. I just checked their website and the sticks are gluten and dairy free.
5. Thanks to Kate at Gluten Free Gobsmacked for the tip on grating the butter. It was a lot of fun and decreased my prep time by quite a bit.
I tried these biscuits for the first time, following the recipe exactly. However, it took at least 30 minutes for them to get done at 350 degrees, and they were flat and not very biscuit-like. The taste was good. I will reduce the liquid next time. Have you tried baking them at a higher temperature, as regular biscuits bake at 450 degrees?
The batter for these biscuits was very runny (more like a pancake batter). So I put them in a cupcake tin with liners and baked for 17 minutes and they tasted pretty good.
This was a GREAT recipe but being lazy I wanted fast too…it’s a guy thing! The following works great and makes 8 biscuits in a muffin tin.
1 cup Bobs Red Mill Biscuit Mix, 1/2 cup corn starch, 1 tsp baking soda, 1 tsp salt, 1/4 cup corn oil, 1 1/4 cup butter milk, 2 tsp cider vinegar and 1 egg. Mix all dry ingredients in one bowl and liquid in another. Spray/coat muffin tin with oil and preheat oven 375 to 400 deg F. Add liquid to dry bowl and mix like heck until all dry ingredients just incorporated. Spoon out mixture into muffin tin filling each to about 3/4 full bake till slightly brown on top…about 15 min.
My batter was pretty runny too. I just tried to pile the batter up as much as possible. They puffed up nicely… did spread a fair bit… All in all, though, they were really delicious. I’m thinking next time I’ll go with 1 cup water, 1 cup milk. I think that ought to produce a more drop biscuit-like batter.
I made these biscuits for dinner with pumpkin stew. They were fabulous. I have been trying to make a good biscuit for a couple of years and just couldn’t seem to find a good recipe. This one is great. I did have to change the amount of liquid though. There is too much liquid in the recipe. TIP*** Process the brown rice in the food processor for one minute. This will make it into super-fine brown rice flour. This will get rid of any grit feeling from the brown rice. Freezing them works wonderful. Cook for 30 minutes straight from the freezer!
This is a great recipe! It was not runny,the biscuits rose just fine. And tasted really good! I ran out of rice flour(only had 1/2 cup), so made up the difference with sorgum flour.It was so nice to have biscuits that were not gritty,that were light and fluffy.
thanks for your gluten free biscuit recipe. they are wonderful!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
These biscuits tasted great! No problem with the batter or anything. Thank you for the recipe!! My boyfriend had no idea they were gluten free
I made these tonight and they were fantastic! They even got a great review from the kids (15,13,10,7,2). From previous posts I reduced the milk and water to one cup each. They turned out light and fluffy, it was so nice to have biscuits again. This recipe is a keeper and one I will turn to time and time again. Thank you so much!
The most important thing i think when preparing a meal is to make sure you have reputable equipment. It’s well worth spending extra to have good suacepans and knives.
The most important thing i think when cooking food is to make sure you have good pans. It’s well worth spending extra to have good suacepans and knives.
I skipped the water and used regular milk and about 1/4 c. of sour cream ..didn’t have any buttermilk on hand…until the batter was moist enough..also preheated the pan..yumm..came out really good!
Fluffy and gluten-free almost never go together… these biscuits really are fluffy and light! Tasty too. I cut the butter in with a pastry cutter and dropped the biscuits just like cookie batter. The batter is more liquid than a wheat flour biscuit batter, but I think that may be the key to them being fluffy.
Thanks for the recipe!
I need to figure out a way to make a biscuity type of thing that contains no soy, no corn, no sugar or any sort of sweetener (that’s right, no honey, no fake sweetener, NO sweetener at all) no rice, and obviously no gluten. I also can’t use any of the gums or starches, except for arrowroot. I’m trying to sort out a way to make biscuits because I want to make a good cobbler, not to eat the biscuits by themselves; in that instance the juice of the fruit in the cobbler will stand in for sweetener.
Any ideas? Here are the baking ingredients I know I can use safely:
eggs
arrowroot starch/flour
coconut flour (though this requires a LOT of extra liquid it does result in fluffiness)
hazelnut meal
almond meal
milk is fine but sometimes I do substitute in coconut milk
butter
Earth Balance
gluten and corn free baking powder
baking soda
Hmmm. I’m probably forgetting something. I MAY be able to use teff; I haven’t tried it yet to see if I react at all. I do not do so well with legumes in general, though, so garbanzo/fava flour is out.
Generally I find that the nut meals are very heavy and won’t rise with baking powder, so I use more eggs; that gets enough of a fluff to make some very tasty pancakes that are sweetener, corn, rice, soy, wheat and tapioca free..and are high in fiber, low in carbs, and contain omega-3 fatty acids. I’m also finding that coconut flour lightens the mix enough to allow for greater fluff than with nut meals alone. I’m hoping to stick to those ingredients. Any suggestions?
Didn’t taste good at all and just realised why!! There is no sugar in the recipe
To the above that mentioned runny: Check your measuring cup for accuracy. We did a seminar on gluten free cooking at Whole Foods a few weeks back. Our pizza recipe calls for 10oz gluten free beer. an entire 12 oz bottle poured into the cup only appeared to be 10oz. Too much liquid for pizza & would have made the dough “runny” . Sugar also does this because of the moisture content. I always add my liquids a little at a time until it feels like the correct consistency, rather than relying on exact quantities that recipes call for. Too much moisture in GF baking will result in runny dough batter.
Wow!! Thank you so much! I have been g/f since i was about 4 and this is awesome to hear.
Thank you sooo much (again 
)
I like these biscuits. Since the batter is moist, I make drop biscuits with them. We like them with sausage gravy for breakfast, or for dinner I add garlic and shredded cheddar cheese to the mixture prior to baking and after they come out of the oven I brush them with a small amount of melted butter and garlic salt over the top of the biscuits. They remind me of the gluten filled biscuits I used to get at Red Lobster prior to going gluten free. Enjoy! Thanks for the recipe! Its a keeper~
SO the recipe calls for:
“1 1/4 c. soy milk*
1 1/4 c. water”
you might consider changing your wording to simply “1/4 c. soy milk*” and “1/4 c. water” to eliminate the confusion that myself and many others here have run into. The added liquid forced me to make an ENORMOUS batch of biscuits-which my co workers loved, but wasn’t in my plan for the evening.
I used this recipe as dumplings on top of beef stew. 15 minutes uncovered and 15 minutes covered. I followed an earlier posters suggestion and used less liquid and I used 2 Tbsp shortening and 2Tbsp butter instead of all butter. They were very good and resulted in my best attempt at gluten free dumplings and closely resembled the dumplings I used to make before gluten free.
I can’t have vinegar. what do you recommend as a substitute for the vinegar. I see it starred, but no related comments.
Thank you so much for sharing your info with all of us that have to be gluten free.
You can always use lemon juice as an acid if you can’t have vinegar. Hope this helps.