Big, fluffy, made-for-gravy biscuits

I've been trying and mostly failing to make such biscuits for a long time now, but the days of failure are over! This may have something to do with the fact that I bought new baking powder instead of using the same stuff I've had forever and no telling how old it was. The great thing about these biscuits is that they use stuff you generally have around--no need to buy buttermilk or shortening.

Baking Powder Biscuits

Preheat oven to 450.

Whisk together in a bowl:
2 c. all-purpose flour
1 T baking powder
1 t. sugar
1 t. salt

Take 2 T butter (make sure it's cold) and drop it into the flour. Work it into the flour by pinching and squeezing the bits of butter until it's all incorporated. Once that's done, do the same with 5 T more butter. Cutting it into small chunks before the pinching and squeezing operation helps. When it's ready, there shouldn't be any flour-covered butter chunks bigger than a pea, and the mixture should look fairly consistent.
Stir 3/4 c. milk into the mixture. Gather up all the dry bits into the dough by hand. Once you have everything from the bowl incorporated into a big wad of dough, press it out on a floured work surface in a rectangular shape until it's about 1/2" thick. Fold it like a letter into thirds and press it down to 1/2" again. Fold it like a letter again (this helps the biscuit to be flaky and somewhat layered) and press it into a rectangle about 5" by 8".
Cut out biscuits with a biscuit-cutter or a glass (I used a plastic cup about 3" wide with the bottom punched out to let the air out as you press down) and put them on an ungreased cookie sheet an inch or so apart. Use the leftover dough scraps to form a couple more biscuits.
You can then brush the tops with melted butter if you want, but I didn't, since I figured there was probably enough butter in them to begin with. Bake 15 minutes or until they brown a bit on top.
Voila! Homemade biscuits!