This Popular Chain Restaurant Makes Its Biscuits From Scratch

A flaky batch of freshly baked buttermilk biscuits are guaranteed to please everyone at the table. A simple combo of flour, butter, buttermilk, and baking powder, these carby caboodles are a cinch to prepare at home. However, if you're not in the mood for a baking session there's one popular chain restaurant that makes its biscuits from scratch and will duly quell your craving: Cracker Barrel.

According to the Cracker Barrel blog, each store "has a dedicated biscuit oven that produces a fresh batch of warm biscuits, perfectly flakey in texture and thickness. Handmade and delicious. That's the reason why they all look a little bit different." The restaurant also uses "custom-designed rolling pins and biscuit cutters". While this is true, we've discovered that the devil is in the details. With a little online sleuthing, we've learned that the restaurant uses pre-made mixes to its advantage, much like other chain restaurants, likely to save time and guarantee uniformity across its 657 eateries.

On a Reddit thread devoted to discussing the ingredients in Cracker Barrel's biscuits, one employee commented that the restaurant gets "prepackaged bags of "Dry Mix" (flour) that has the shortening and stuff added in it," indicating that they don't assemble and measure every ingredient by hand. The commenter further explained that half a gallon of buttermilk is added to the pre-mixed bag and placed in a mixer. Finally, just prior to baking, the tops of the rolled-out biscuits are brushed with margarine.

Cracker Barrel's menu has changed in many ways since it opened in 1969, but the biscuits are still hugely popular (the restaurant makes an astonishing 210 million biscuits a year). So, what makes them so yummy? The ingredients in the dry mix are pretty standard and include flour, a leavening agent, salt, and soybean oil (this neutral-flavored ingredient is commonly used to make vegetable shortening). 

Luckily another Redditor who worked at Cracker Barrel for over ten years shed some light on the matter and revealed that the ovens the biscuits are cooked in "are steamed ovens, like they use for Soft Pretzel or Bread at your local grocery store or even some pastry bakeries. This helps keep them "doughy and moist"." If you want to recreate Cracker Barrel's biscuits at home, you can purchase a box of the restaurant's biscuit and dumpling mix and make your own batch of 16 with a little flour and water.

Some of the other chain restaurants that make their food from scratch include Texas Roadhouse, which serves hand-cut steaks and freshly baked rolls, and Chuy's. This Tex-Mex restaurant prepares every meal and sauce from the ground up, taking care to select fresh produce every morning.