How to Make Digestive Biscuits Recipe - Gemma’s Bigger Bolder Baking (2024)

FAQs

What are the ingredients in digestive biscuits? ›

Bake them close to each other.

Biscuits are an exception to this rule: Placing them close to one another on your baking sheet actually helps them push each other up, as they impede each other from spreading outward and instead puff up skywards.

Use Cold Butter for Biscuits

For flaky layers, use cold butter. When you cut in the butter, you have coarse crumbs of butter coated with flour. When the biscuit bakes, the butter will melt, releasing steam and creating pockets of air. This makes the biscuits airy and flaky on the inside.

Increasing the amount of butter definitely makes the biscuit "taste" softer, more crumbly, and more flaky.

Biscuits should be baked at a high temperature so they turn out golden brown and rise nice and tall. I like to bake my biscuits at 450oF. By baking at a high temperature it helps your homemade biscuits to rise up quickly in the oven.

While biscuits receive some leavening power from chemical sources — baking powder and baking soda — the difference between serviceable and greatness comes from the extra rise that steam provides. In order to generate steam, the oven must be set at a minimum of 425 degrees for at least 10 minutes prior to baking.

The butter version rises the highest — look at those flaky layers! The shortening biscuit is slightly shorter and a bit drier, too. Butter contains a bit of water, which helps create steam and gives baked goods a boost.

Biscuit recipes tend to be egg-free, this makes them drier and the lack of protein to bind the mix helps achieve that crumbly texture. For super light, crumbly biscuits try grating or pushing the yolks of hard-boiled eggs through a sieve into the biscuit dough.

What type of flour makes the best biscuits? ›

The Bottom Line

I personally think that biscuits are at their best when you use a fine pastry-type flour like White Lily or Bob's Pastry flour. BUT, all-purpose flour is absolutely an option. I actually think that your technique when making biscuits is just as - if not, more - important than the flour you use.

Shortening is more effective at reducing gluten formation in doughs. Indeed, this is where the name comes from — it “shortens” gluten strands. It also has a higher melting point than butter, making it less likely to smear into biscuit dough, even if you use your hands to mix it.

For baking purposes, the Test Kitchen recommends using unsalted butter so you can better control the amount of salt that goes into the recipe. Salted butter is best for serving at the table with bread or to flavor a dish, like mashed potatoes.

Cutting butter into flour or other dry ingredients is an essential part of preparing pastry dough, biscuits and crumbly pie toppings because it gives a light and flaky texture that can't be replicated with any other technique.

Nutritionists often emphasize that one should exercise moderation when consuming these biscuits. While they can be a source of dietary fibre and be a satisfying snack, overindulging in these biscuits can lead to an excessive intake of calories and added sugars.

While not packed with vitamins and minerals, if you eat digestive biscuits in moderation they can fit perfectly into a balanced diet. The fiber content can aid digestion, and they make for a better choice when compared to other cookies filled with refined sugars and unhealthy fats.

Digestive biscuits are used in an interchangeable way as graham crackers in the U.S. They are best described as whole wheat shortbread, and are crisp like shortbread and equally as buttery. Biscuits in Ireland are not equivalent to soft American biscuits, they are a type of cookie.

These biscuits are made with saturated fats and may contain around 3-5 grams of fat per biscuit, which may not be a healthy choice. Lastly, the addition of sodium as well as other preservatives to enhance the taste and shelf life are synthetic in nature. Thus, digestive biscuits are not as healthy as they sound!