I use 2 cups flour, 2 teaspoons baking powder, a 1/2 teaspoon baking soda, lard and a cup of milk.
They have a tendency to come out very hard on the outside and only rise a little. Am I working them too much? Too little? More powder or soda? Less milk? More milk? Halp!
er, nevermind.
First guess is you’re over working the dough. It should just barely come together.
Also, try freezing all the ingredients, bowls and utensils. The dough should be cold when it goes in the oven.
ETA: Also, use buttermilk, the acidity activates the baking soda.
What? What? Was it biscuit related?
Cold. Got it! Work it less. Got that too! I will do the freezer thing.
The dough should be very moist, almost wet, coming out of the bowl. Then on a floured surface you work the dough just enough that it holds together to form biscuits. Too much flour in the dough equals tough biscuits.
(Too little shortening can also yield tough biscuits.)
The first time I read it, I missed “lard” in your short list of ingredients and I was like, “well duh, how can you make biscuits with no fat – without fat of course they’re going to be hard.” Then reading comprehension occured and I was like :smack:
I’m curious about the baking temp. Is your oven accurate? Could it be “fast” ie, too hot?
The other factor is the flour you’re using. Hard flour makes hard biscuits. Most of the old Southern ladies I know prefer Martha White or White Lily–if you can’t get a good soft AP flour like that, you can try mixing your AP half and half with cake or pastry flour.
Are you making sure that the oven is fully pre-heated? That’s critical for baking which is much less forgiving than roasting.
You might want to check out the Shirley’s Touch of Grace Biscuits article and recipe for tips.
Rather than the heartwarming story of grandmother and granddaughter making biscuits together, I took away from it the feeling that grandma sucked at teaching, as she just told a young girl with bad biscuits she must not have added a “touch of grace.” Instead of, say, watching her make the biscuits and guiding her.
Biscuits require a HOT oven.
My mother couldn’t make biscuits. I couldn’t, either. Well, Momma used 350 degrees for EVERYTHING, and taught me the same.
I later met a woman who could make the fluffiest, lightest, most ethereal biscuits I’d ever eaten. She made them from a mix she stirred up herself (25 pounds of flour, one can of shortening, etc etc) and she just scooped out a bowlful of mix and stirred in the milk, all by “feel.”
But her oven was pre-heated, and she fired it up to 400 degrees.
Me? If I want biscuits, I buy a tube of GRANDS. We don’t eat them that often.
~VOW
That recipe has more ingredients than I have on hand. Oh and thanks grandma, you self-aggrandizing non-explainer.
Seconding the vote to use buttermilk. The acid reacts with the baking powder and “fluffs” up the biscuits nicely, as well as adding the yummy buttermilk flavor.
Allrighty then. I’m gonna make biscuits now. With cold ingredients, not overworking the WET dough and an already hot oven. Wish me luck!
I actually sent my husband out for Pillsbury biscuits. He said he couldn’t find any and came back with lard AND shortening instead. These biscuits are gonna get covered with sausage gravy, so if they still come out tough, nobody will complain overmuch.
Forgot to mention, the acid in buttermilk inhibits gluten formation.
The best – and most painful-- biscuits I ever made! I used 2 cups flr, 2 tblspn butter, 2 tblspn Crisco all put in freezer. Put a tblsp of white vinegar in the milk to butter it up. They were fluffy and not kinda flat at all. And then they did something my biscuits never did before. They sliiiiiid across the baking sheet.
I, being an idiot of habit, had one mitt on. When I saw the beautiful buscuits sliding off the end of the baking sheet, I – without thinking-- grabbed the other end of the baking sheet with my bare hand. Ow. Ow a lot.
Blisters are now forming on all four of my fingertips and am typing this one handed. The biscuits are so good it seems almost a shame to cover them in sausage gravy. Almost.
Yay! I’m glad they came out so well.
And Boo! Burns suck.
Successful biscuits.!
Don’t forget to put butter on 'em.
The biscuits, not the burns.
And now you need to make some chocolate gravy to put on top of those biscuits. 