Last year I discovered a very good batter recipe for chicken strips: A cup of flour, a cup of buttermilk, an egg, and 1/4 teaspoon of salt. I mixed in garlic, paprika, and black pepper in arbitrary amounts and it worked pretty well. I had some left over so I just fried that up and made some tasty fritters, hush puppies, whatever they’re called.
I was thinking I could mix in some shredded cheddar to make cheese biscuits, but I’d rather not fry those, seeing as how I like being alive. What would I need to add so I could bake them? Yeast? Baking powder? More flour?
Baking powder biscuits are made with flour, baking powder, butter, milk, and salt. You can experiment with your recipe as it is – just use much less buttermilk (more like 1/4 cup) and a little butter, say a couple of tablespoons. Throw in a half cup of grated cheddar, though if you do you can skip the salt. Your dough should be sticky. Roll it out on a well floured surface to your favourite biscuit thickness, say about an inch, and bake on an ungreased baking sheet at 400 for about 12 minutes or so.
I’ve used this recipe, by forming it into biscuits rather than one big cake and nixing the crab, with great success. It’s almost identical to anyrose’s recipe, but uses more cheese (a full cup instead of a half cup), adds some melted butter to the biscuit mix, and includes parsley. Also, I tend to use more garlic powder than they recommend, but that’s a personal choice.
I tell you, I like baking and all, and I’ve made my share of biscuits from scratch, but Pillsbury’s frozen cheddar garlic biscuits are AWESOME. And they’re in a little ziploc thing so you can have exactly as many as you want. They’re getting a little hard to find though - they always have the buttermilk ones but the cheddar ones are a little rare. But trust me, they’re great.
Really - my aunts, queens of scratch biscuits, don’t even make their own catheads anymore, they just get the Pillsbury frozen kind.
I tried your suggestion, using less “buttermilk” (I had to use 2%), adding butter and more cheese (almost a full cup). The dough certainly was sticky, but I don’t have a rolling pin so I just dropped it on the sheet in wads about the size of golf balls. It took about 25 minutes at 450, and the cheese I put on the top had melted and the edges of the biscuits were golden brown.
Unfortunately, they suck. They’re edible, but they’re bland and pretty dry. They have a nice texture in the middle, but the surface is like a breadstick. Perhaps I cooked them too long? I also don’t think I used enough garlic or oregano either.
Here’s my recipe:
2 cups of flour
2 regular sized eggs
1/2 cup 2% milk
2 tbsp butter
2/3 - 1 cup of grated cheddar
1 tsp of baking powder
and what I thought were fairly liberal amounts of garlic and oregano
2 c. sifted all-purpose flour
1 tbsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 c. butter
3/4 c. milk
That’s a standard baking powder biscuit recipe, though like I said you can omit the salt and use 1/2 c. of grated cheddar if you’re keen on the cheese. Dough should be quite sticky, but just roll out using liberal amts of flour and cut into rounds (we use a heart shaped cutter here). They do turn out on the dry side, but they shouldn’t be like a breadstick on the outside. 25 mins is too long – should be 12-15 at 450F.
What would I need to add so I could bake them? Yeast? Baking powder? More flour?