The Southern Fast Food Chain That Makes Fresh Biscuits Every 20 Minutes

Any discussion of Southern food has to include buttermilk biscuits. This classic of the region's cooking is eaten with breakfast eggs and bacon, sandwiched with ham, smothered with sausage gravy, or simply topped with butter, honey, or jam. Fried chicken and biscuits is also famously Southern. It's been translated into fast food gold by big chains like KFC and Popeye's, but also by a regional chain in the South called Bojangles, which promises fresh biscuits every 20 minutes.

Founded in 1977 in Charlotte, North Carolina, Bojangles has more than 800 locations in 17 (mostly) Southern states. The chain boasts specializing in Southern chicken, "made-from-scratch" biscuits, and iced tea. It's also known for its biscuit breakfast sandwiches which Bojangles serves all day. Its biscuits are filled with Cajun fried chicken, country-fried steak, and country ham (for traditional ham biscuits) or topped with Southern sausage gravy. Biscuits play a part in close to 75% of Bojangles' food, including its Peach Cobbler and Bo Berry Biscuit desserts. With all that, its 20-minute fresh biscuit commitment starts to make sense.

Bojangles' buttermilk biscuits are made fresh in-store daily by full-time, certified Master Biscuit Makers who get the title after thorough instruction and training. Each makes an average of 1,000 biscuits in eight hours. As part of the job, they sign a contract pledging not to disclose the biscuit recipe. Bojangles won't share the biscuits' full ingredients list, but we know it includes basics like self-rising flour, vegetable shortening, and tangy buttermilk (which reacts with the baking powder for more airy biscuits).

Bojangles can churn out biscuits in 20 minutes in large part because of its 49-step system. The steps are optimized not only to create fluffy and delicious biscuits, but to make sure they come out quickly, efficiently, and uniformly across all locations. However, they're still literally handmade since the biscuit makers use their hands to work the dough. Their intentional training and experience comes into play, as they know when it's right by the way it feels.

The dry and wet ingredients are first mixed in a bowl to make a loose dough which is placed onto a floured surface. The dough is compressed in a six-move sequence of pressing down first in the center, then the top, bottom, two sides, and center again. Each side is then folded into the center and the now rectangular dough is rolled up into a bundle. Every biscuit-making station has two rolling pins, a regular one to start rolling out the dough bundle and another with metal circles on each end so it has an even ½-inch final thickness.

The biscuits are cut out and baked 15 on a baking sheet for nine minutes. Once done, they're finished with a brush of melted butter on their golden tops and sent out for customers as the Master Biscuit Makers begin work on the next 20-minute batch.