What is the Bob Evans Country Biscuit Breakfast?

It's an open-faced plate: a split buttermilk biscuit topped with crumbled Bob Evans sausage, country sausage gravy, one egg cooked to order, and shredded cheddar cheese. It comes with hash browns or home fries on the side. Official description from bobevans.com: 'A buttermilk biscuit topped with one farm-fresh egg cooked-to-order, crumbled Bob Evans sausage, country gravy, and cheddar cheese. Served with hash browns or home fries.' The base dish without the side runs about 520 calories; with home fries, about 850 calories. Price is approximately $7.99–9.99 depending on location.

Why does this recipe use rolled biscuits instead of drop biscuits?

Because Bob Evans serves rolled, cut biscuits — and the texture difference is significant. Rolled biscuits are layered: when the dough folds and rests during rolling, the fat pieces create distinct horizontal strata. In the oven, those fat pockets melt into steam, which puffs the layers apart. The result is a biscuit that separates cleanly when split and has an interior that absorbs gravy from the cut edges. Drop biscuits skip the rolling entirely — you just drop the wet dough onto the pan. They're faster and the exterior can be excellent, but they lack internal layers and tend to flood with gravy rather than soak it in the way a layered biscuit does. Most copycat recipes use drop biscuits for convenience; the restaurant doesn't.

What fat should I use in the biscuits — butter, shortening, or both?

The combination (butter + shortening) replicates the restaurant result most closely. Shortening is 100% fat with no water content — it coats the flour more completely and produces taller, flakier biscuits with a more neutral flavor. Butter is about 80% fat and contributes water (which creates steam and layers) plus rich, dairy flavor. Using both gives you the height and flakiness from the shortening and the flavor from the butter. If you don't keep shortening, all-butter biscuits work — freeze the butter, grate it directly into the flour, and increase total butter to 6 tablespoons. You get slightly less height but noticeably better flavor.

Why do my biscuits come out flat?

Almost always one of three things: fat that wasn't cold enough (melted fat = no flaky layers = flat biscuit — work fast and keep everything chilled), rolled too thin (pat out to a full 1 inch for the final layer, not 1/2-inch — biscuits don't grow much horizontally and need that pre-bake height to finish tall), or a twisted cutter (cutting with a twist compresses the dough edges and seals the layers shut so they can't separate and rise). Check all three. The most common culprit in home kitchens is rolling too thin.

How is the Country Biscuit Breakfast different from the Bob Evans Farmer's Choice?

They're built around different core items. The Farmer's Choice is a customizable platter — you pick from buttermilk hotcakes or Brioche French toast, shredded hash browns or home fries, 2 eggs, and a meat choice. It's the 'everything' breakfast and runs 1,070–1,460 calories depending on your selections. The Country Biscuit Breakfast is biscuit-centric: the split biscuit IS the starch, topped with sausage gravy (so gravy replaces the standalone hotcakes or toast), one egg, and cheese. It's a simpler, more Southern-tradition plate — biscuits and gravy plus an egg, not a multi-component selection. Both use Bob Evans sausage; the key flavor difference is that the Country Biscuit Breakfast has gravy integrated into the starch rather than served on the side.

Can I make the biscuits ahead of time?

The dough can be made and cut the night before, then refrigerated unbaked on a parchment-lined sheet covered tightly with plastic wrap. Bake straight from the refrigerator — cold dough actually rises better in the initial blast of heat because the fat doesn't start melting until it hits the oven. Don't let cut biscuits sit at room temperature before baking; the fat softens and the rise suffers. Fully baked biscuits reheat passably (200°F oven, 8–10 minutes), but the texture of the layers softens. Fresh-baked is meaningfully better.

What sausage does Bob Evans use in the sausage gravy?

Bob Evans Original breakfast sausage — the same product sold in grocery stores as the Bob Evans Original Pork Sausage Roll. Bob Evans (the company) was founded around its sausage recipe, so the retail product and the restaurant gravy use the same base. The Original variety has a moderate sage note and enough black pepper to season the finished gravy without additional seasoning. The Sage variety has a much more pronounced herbaceous flavor — good if you prefer that, but it pushes past the restaurant's signature flavor profile. Don't use hot or maple variety for this dish.

How do I keep the biscuits and gravy hot at the same time?

Make the gravy first and keep it on the lowest heat, lid slightly ajar (full lid traps steam and causes it to thin out). If it thickens too much while the biscuits bake, add a splash of warm milk and stir to loosen. Pull the biscuits from the oven and let them rest 2 minutes before splitting. The gravy will be ready to ladle. Fry the eggs last — they take 2–3 minutes. The biscuits stay warm for those 2–3 minutes with no problem. Assembly to table should take under 90 seconds once everything is ready.

Copycat Bob Evans Country Biscuit Breakfast — Rolled Biscuits, Not Drop

Bob Evans built its breakfast reputation on two things: its own sausage and biscuits. The restaurant’s signature Country Biscuit Breakfast is exactly what those two things become together — sausage gravy poured open-faced over a split buttermilk biscuit, with a fried egg and melted cheese completing the plate.

The dish is simpler than it looks, but it has one critical technique requirement that most copycat recipes skip: the biscuits must be rolled and cut, not dropped.

The Biscuit Is the Whole Story

The Cheesecake Factory item most people can’t stop talking about has 27 separate components and costs $22. The Bob Evans Country Biscuit Breakfast has five, costs under $10, and has been ordered millions of times by people who weren’t thinking about it critically — they just wanted it.

The reason is the biscuit. Specifically, a rolled-and-cut buttermilk biscuit with distinct flaky layers that absorb the sausage gravy from the cut edges inward. It isn’t a vehicle for the gravy. The biscuit and the gravy are a system.

Why Rolled, Not Drop

Drop biscuit dough is wetter and falls directly onto the pan without rolling or cutting. The exterior bakes up irregular and the interior, without defined layers, has a more bread-like, somewhat crumbly texture. When gravy hits it, the drop biscuit floods — the liquid soaks through the relatively open crumb and the biscuit becomes wet and soft throughout.

A rolled biscuit is different. The dough is stiffer. The rolling and folding creates horizontal strata of dough separated by thin sheets of cold fat. In the oven, those fat sheets melt and the trapped steam puffs the layers apart, producing a biscuit that rises vertically instead of spreading. The interior layers are distinct enough that you can see them when the biscuit is split — light, almost papery sheets separated by small air gaps.

When sausage gravy hits the cut face of a rolled biscuit, it soaks in from the edges but the interior layers stay intact long enough for the biscuit to have texture while you eat it. The outside absorbs the gravy; the inside stays flaky. That contrast is what makes the dish work.

The Three Technique Points That Actually Matter

Roll to a full 1 inch, not 1/2 inch. The most common instruction on copycat biscuit recipes says “roll to 1/2-inch thickness.” This is too thin. Biscuits don’t expand much horizontally — they rise. A 1/2-inch pre-bake thickness produces a biscuit that’s about 3/4-inch baked (at best). Pat out to a full 1 inch and you get a finished biscuit close to 1 1/2 inches — enough height to split cleanly and have a proper gravy-receiving surface. (During the folding step, keep the intermediate pat-outs around 3/4 inch; save the full 1 inch for the final pat before cutting.)

Press straight down with the cutter. Do not twist. This single instruction separates biscuits that open cleanly from biscuits that tear and don’t rise properly. Twisting the cutter as you cut compresses the dough at the edge, welding the layers together so they can’t separate in the oven. The finished biscuit looks fine on the outside but tears instead of splitting at the equator, and it rises less than it should.

Keep the fat cold. Cold butter and shortening melt in the oven, creating steam that puffs the layers. Fat that’s already soft by the time it goes into the oven just coats the flour — you lose the layering mechanism entirely. Grating frozen butter directly into the flour is the most reliable way to keep the fat cold and get it into the dough quickly with minimal warmth transfer from your hands.

The Gravy

The full Bob Evans sausage gravy technique is covered in detail on the copycat Bob Evans sausage gravy page, including the key points: don’t drain the rendered fat, use significantly more black pepper than you think is correct, and use room-temperature (not cold) milk to prevent lumping.

For this recipe, the gravy is the same but scaled for 2 servings. The condensed version in the ingredients list is enough for 2 plates. If you want a larger batch to pour more liberally (which is the right call), follow the full recipe linked above.

Assembly: Open-Faced, Not Stacked

The Country Biscuit Breakfast is served open-faced — the biscuit split along its natural equator, both halves face-up on the plate, with gravy poured over both. The egg sits on one half. The cheese goes over the egg and softens from the gravy’s heat.

This is not a biscuit sandwich. Don’t close it.

The open-faced presentation matters for two reasons: the gravy needs to reach the biscuit’s cut face to begin soaking in, and the egg yolk (if you go over-easy) needs to break on the plate and run into the gravy for the combination to work. A sandwich format contains everything; an open-faced presentation lets the components interact.

The Egg

Over-easy is the traditional egg preparation for this dish. The yolk runs into the gravy and the combination becomes richer and more integrated than any of its three components alone.

Over-hard works if you prefer a set yolk — the flavor profile shifts to something closer to a protein plate with gravy as a sauce rather than a cohesive dish. Both are correct choices; they produce genuinely different eating experiences.

Copycat Bob Evans Country Biscuit Breakfast