For The Best Southern-Style Biscuits, Reach For This Old-School Flour

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If you've ever wondered why southern-style biscuits are softer, lighter, and somehow more forgiving than any northern attempt, the answer starts with the flour. White Lily Self-Rising Flour, the old-school standby of grandmothers and breakfast cooks alike, remains the gold standard for southern-style biscuits.

"It's light and fluffy, just as a biscuit flour should be," said Chuck Hayworth, private chef at The Resort Chef in North Carolina. "White Lily evokes memories for me of making early morning breakfast with my grandmother," he told The Takeout.

Made from soft winter wheat, White Lily's secret lies in its low protein content, which produces a tender, airy crumb rather than a dense, chewy one — and that difference matters. When liquid meets flour, gluten proteins develop, which is great for baguettes but terrible for superior buttermilk biscuits. Less gluten means more lift and that featherlight interior that steams when you break it open. While the South has evolved countless biscuit styles, from quick three-ingredient biscuits to layered buttermilk showstoppers, White Lily remains the common denominator. It's tradition in a paper bag and one that's been quietly defining the best biscuit for over a century.

Ask any southern chef or anyone raised on Sunday biscuits, and they'll tell you the same thing: It's the flour. "It has a texture unique to its quality," Chuck Hayworth said of the White Lily brand. "If I'm in a hurry, [I use] a simple self-rising flour with buttermilk and butter cut into the dough. If not, I use heirloom varieties such as Einkorn." The resulting texture is what keeps bakers loyal. It yields dough that's pliable but never tough, a quality that helps create biscuits as soft as brioche. "I use it as a quick go-to for cakes too," Hayworth added.

Beyond science, there's nostalgia baked into every batch. White Lily is shorthand for mornings spent in kitchens scented with butter and coffee and for family breakfasts where precision mattered less than instinct. When Hayworth thinks of the brand, he recalls those early mornings baking with his grandmother and, later, "many breakfast shifts where it saved time."

Even as trends shift and heritage grains take center stage, the flour company founded in 1883 continues to represent comfort and continuity. While modern bakers experiment with alternatives, the logic for southern-style biscuits remains the same: Choose softness over strength and tenderness over structure. White Lily's low-protein blend keeps biscuits delicate, flaky, and endlessly adaptable, the same qualities that make it the flour of choice for classics like homemade chicken and dumplings. Because when it comes to tradition, the most old-school ingredient still makes the best southern biscuits.