ChefSteps is a team of chefs, writers, and food lovers who develop recipes, techniques, and guides to help people cook better at home.

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Some folks don’t believe it’s possible to make good biscuits north of the Mason-Dixon line. Biscuits are like that: most people will tell you most of the time that you’re making them all wrong. But trust us when we tell you that the secret to baking soft, flaky biscuits has nothing to do with geographic location and everything to do with flour. And if you’re going to make the best biscuits north or south of the Mason-Dixon, you should be using flour from soft red winter wheat. Period.We use White Lily self-rising flour—you may need to special order it, but it’s worth the trouble. Its relatively low protein content yields less gluten, leading to a tenderer crumb, and the softer grain can be milled very fine without fracturing too many starch granules, so the biscuits stay delicate instead of stodgy. And though recipes and techniques for biscuits will vary, we also like to use buttermilk for its tangy flavor.These golden-brown mounds of quick bread make an excellent sop for sorghum syrup or foundation for sausage gravy. But however you like to eat your biscuits, the most important thing is to make them a lot. A good biscuit recipe rewards repetition with excellence.