I cheat in the mixing of the dry ingredients and use self-rising flour. King Arthur brand is my preference, but any will do.
Dump a pile of flour into a mixing bowl.
Cut in the fat. Butter is best, shortening works fine. A dozen biscuits generally gets about a stick of butter.
Mix in milk/cream/buttermilk (I add buttermilk powder if I’m using one of the first 2) until it comes together as a slightly moist mix. Mix it as little as possible.
Turn out onto a floured surface (I use self rising flour to dust my workspace)
Pat out to the desired thickness.
Cut biscuits.
Gather dough, re-pat, cut more. Repeat until there is not enough to cut another biscuit.
Cook at 425F until done.
This is very much a ‘grandmother’ type of instruction set, and I’m sure there are folks cringing when they read this, but it works for me. I tried many recipes and never got a good result until I discovered self-rising flour and started winging it.
Add a bit of masa flour for an interesting texture/flavor if you’re going with something Tex-Mex. (Or when I make biscuits & sausage gravy)
I have some ham stock in the larder. I think the brand is called “Better Than Bouillon.” I thought I might try that and add some chopped ham to the finished soup.
You can make biscuits with almost any dairy product, including yogurt, but the ratio of flour to the dairy will change, of course. After you cut in the butter to the flour/baking powder mixture, add the dairy and mix until the dough looks “shaggy”. At that point, scoop it out onto a lightly floured board and pat it down gently into a rectangle about an inch thick. Fold it into thirds and repeat. Do one more time. Cut your biscuits using some sort of floured round implement, but do NOT twist the cutter when doing so. Follow baking instructions above. Southern cookbooks recommend brushing the finished biscuits with melted butter as soon as they come out of the oven, but I don’t bother with that.
This clip from Martha Stewart popped up on my Google Plus feed recently, the big difference between it and what I had previously seen is the idea of using a food processor to cut the cold butter into the flour.
The shaggy look is from minimum mixing and not from moisture. If the dough is smooth, you’ve likely over-mixed it. While the dough will still rise, you may not have the flakiness/lightness associated with biscuits because the butter has gotten too warm. This is also the reason for patting the dough after folding, instead of kneading it.
Twisting the cutter can pinch the sides and affect the rising.
The basic Southern biscuit recipe I use is 2 cups self-rising flour, 1/2 cup chilled butter and a cup of buttermilk. The butter is cut in quickly, then the liquid is added and mixed with a fork until the aforementioned shaggy look is achieved.
I believe this is also why food processors usually yield better results than hand-mixing. It’s much much much faster than cutting the butter in by hand (well for me at least, I don’t know what sort of cut-the-butter-into-the-flour whizzes are out there in doperland), so the butter stays cold. Colder butter = more lift.
I just made sweet potato/buttermilk biscuits using the processor. You’d think they would be heavy, but no.
I don’t have anything to add to the biscuit discussion, but…
I love that I live in a world where there is such a thing as a cake emergency. I can just picture it. “So-and-so is coming over! Quick! We need a cake!!”
I used a pastry cutting tool much like this, and a large, shallow bowl and it works just fine. If the butter begins to soften, just stick the bowl in the refrigerator for a few minutes.
For the love of god, get me 7 CCs of Red Velvet or she won’t make it!
I’ve often wondered whether it would be worth it to run chilled butter through a mandolin over a bowl of flour, then dust, vacuum seal, and freeze. Has anyone tried it for biscuits or otherwise?
Rythmdvl - that’s just what I do for the recipe below. I freeze the lard and butter, the shave it on the mandolin. Much easier to work with, and maintains its structure to provide lovely layering.
4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup lard
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 cup heavy cream
In a large bowl, combine flour and salt, tossing with a fork to blend. Make a well in center of mixture and add cream; stir to combine well. Turn out onto a lightly floured work surface and knead 3 or 4 times until dough holds together. Preheat oven to 400F . Grease baking sheet*; set aside. Shave lard and butter.
Pat out dough about 1 inch thick and begin to beat it, using a wooden mallet or other implement, with a gentle, rhythmic motion. When entire surface has been well beaten, add a layer of lard shavings covering the top and fold dough in half and repeat the process. Continue to beat and fold until dough is well blistered (20 to 30 minutes). In the last two folds, add butter.
Roll out dough 1/2 inch thick and cut into rounds** with a floured 2-inch biscuit cutter; reroll and cut scraps. Repeat until all dough has been used. Prick top of each biscuit 3 times with a fork. Place biscuits on greased baking sheet; bake in preheated oven until golden brown (20 to 25 minutes). Serve hot.
*My Grandmother used bacon grease, I use parchment paper instead.
**I use a square one and then just smoosh the corners in a bit to prevent them over-crisping. The re-rolled dough does not have the same lovely layer structure.
Is that a typo on the amounts you listed? The usual flour to fat ratio for biscuits is 4:1. Any recipe I’ve seen lists 2 cups flour to 1/2 cup fat. That’s also an interesting working technique that I’ve absolutely never seen in any biscuit recipe, but if it works for you, what the hell.
