Are Chick-Fil-A Biscuits Really Made From Scratch?

When you stop at Chick-fil-A for a Chicken, Egg, & Cheese Biscuit on your way to work, it may feel like the day is just beginning, but not for the Chick-fil-A team members. That biscuit sandwich (arguably the best sandwich to order from Chick-fil-A's breakfast menu) that you waited approximately four minutes for took a lot longer to end up in your hands. No, not because it took the nice team members half an hour to assemble the breakfast sandwich, but because the biscuits were freshly made.

Chick-fil-A's biscuits are made from scratch every morning at each free-standing location, a labor of love well worth the effort. Employees responsible for biscuit creation get to work at about 5:30 a.m. to begin the process. At any given moment, there are at least 20 handmade Chick-fil-A biscuits on deck and ready to serve, with more biscuits going in and out of the oven continuously until breakfast ends at 10:30 a.m. Chick-fil-A's biscuits are renowned across the country, but they're especially popular in what Chick-fil-A calls the "Biscuit Belt," or the locations situated in the southeast region of the United States. Which says a lot, since southerners know a thing or two about a good homemade biscuit.

Chick-fil-A's scratch-made biscuits are created similarly to any other fluffy southern biscuit recipe. Team members begin by pouring a special biscuit mix into a large mixing bowl with 32 ounces of ice water, setting the mixer to combine the ingredients for only 18 seconds on a low speed. After dusting the workspace with self-rising White Lily flour, the cook will remove the biscuit dough from the bowl and gently work until it's flat. Once flat, the dough is folded in on itself several times to create air pockets that leave the biscuit fluffy and flaky. The dough is flattened again, cut into biscuit shapes with a circular tool, then moved to a buttered tray for baking until it reaches golden perfection.

When Chick-fil-A opened a standalone restaurant in Atlanta in 1986, managers knew they wanted to adjust the menu not only to bring in a more robust breakfast crowd, but to fit the demands of southern cuisine. Enter the Chick-fil-A breakfast biscuit sandwich, combining the brand's signature breaded chicken with a little piece of the South. Although customers were hesitant at first, the Chicken Biscuit grew to become Chick-fil-A's most popular breakfast item, with scratch-made biscuits being a big part of the breakfast menu's overall success.