Biscuits
Posted: Sun Dec 11, 2016 11:53 am
There must be hundreds of recipes for biscuits. Most are distantly related to my mother's scones, but in the eating you wouldn't know it. The classic north american biscuit is a hastily cooked slightly crunchy mess of flour and fat, and is entirely yummy if eaten just as soon as they come out of the oven. I have experimented a bit over the years, but the best I can do is this:
1½ cups all purpose flour
2 TBSP baking powder
½ tsp salt
Mix these together well, using a sieve if need be to squish the lumps in the baking powder. It works fine to use a kitchen stand-mixer with dough hooks.
Add to the dry ingredients:
½ cup sunflower oil (any fat will do, but liquid is easy)
and
a ¾ cup measure with one egg and the rest made up of a milk product. Buttermilk is my favourite for this part.
Mix briefly till combined, using a spatula if needed in the stand-mixer to ensure all the dry ingredients are mixed in. Everyone says you must not knead biscuit dough if you want it to rise, and rightly so. But if you want to make tall biscuits that rise as best they can, you do need to do something akin to making the layers of real puff pastry. I take my dough, which is currently too wet, out of the mixer, place it on a silicone baking sheet and sprinkle it with more all-purpose flour, flatten it with my hand, turn it and sprinkle again, repeating until the dough feels right. You don't want a wet greasy surface, but you don't want it to get to being crumbly. Continue flattening to ½ - ¾ inch thickness and folding in half several times. This is what makes the layers you will need for the biscuit to rise well and pull apart in flaky layers. Don't do it more than around eight times, but you'll find that out for yourself as you experiment. After the final fold, press it out to ¾" thickness and use a biscuit cutter to cut out your biscuits. Squish the remaining dough into a similar thickness for some more cut-outs, and again for some more after that. Should make about ten biscuits if you have the thickness right. Bake in a pre-heated oven at 400ºF for 18 minutes (18 is a strange number to pick, but it works well with my thirty year old stove. Experience will show you what works for yours.) Cool on a rack, but best eaten when still warm. Practically useless the next day unless very hungry. I made a batch today as it is -15ºC and hot flour and fat seems needful. Most disappeared before I got the camera out:
Give it a try - very easy and an important added touch when serving a homemade soup, stew, or chowder.
Chris
1½ cups all purpose flour
2 TBSP baking powder
½ tsp salt
Mix these together well, using a sieve if need be to squish the lumps in the baking powder. It works fine to use a kitchen stand-mixer with dough hooks.
Add to the dry ingredients:
½ cup sunflower oil (any fat will do, but liquid is easy)
and
a ¾ cup measure with one egg and the rest made up of a milk product. Buttermilk is my favourite for this part.
Mix briefly till combined, using a spatula if needed in the stand-mixer to ensure all the dry ingredients are mixed in. Everyone says you must not knead biscuit dough if you want it to rise, and rightly so. But if you want to make tall biscuits that rise as best they can, you do need to do something akin to making the layers of real puff pastry. I take my dough, which is currently too wet, out of the mixer, place it on a silicone baking sheet and sprinkle it with more all-purpose flour, flatten it with my hand, turn it and sprinkle again, repeating until the dough feels right. You don't want a wet greasy surface, but you don't want it to get to being crumbly. Continue flattening to ½ - ¾ inch thickness and folding in half several times. This is what makes the layers you will need for the biscuit to rise well and pull apart in flaky layers. Don't do it more than around eight times, but you'll find that out for yourself as you experiment. After the final fold, press it out to ¾" thickness and use a biscuit cutter to cut out your biscuits. Squish the remaining dough into a similar thickness for some more cut-outs, and again for some more after that. Should make about ten biscuits if you have the thickness right. Bake in a pre-heated oven at 400ºF for 18 minutes (18 is a strange number to pick, but it works well with my thirty year old stove. Experience will show you what works for yours.) Cool on a rack, but best eaten when still warm. Practically useless the next day unless very hungry. I made a batch today as it is -15ºC and hot flour and fat seems needful. Most disappeared before I got the camera out:
Give it a try - very easy and an important added touch when serving a homemade soup, stew, or chowder.
Chris