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High There, Biscuits

Posted by Arwen Mosher in Food on Monday, October 03, 2011 7:42 PM

You know what’s good? Biscuits. And I love to make them. Five ingredients, a few minutes to put them together, and I’ve got delicious baked goodness fresh from my oven.

But I long ago gave up on flaky biscuits in favor of fluffy dropped ones, because I could not get the hang of the rolled ones. Somehow mine always turned out flat and puck-like.

I recently had a whim and gave flaky biscuits another try, though, and - almost accidentally - stumbled upon success. A few more tries and some tweaking, and I’m now confident I can make lovely high-rise biscuits whenever my family wants them.

I’m sure there are “basic biscuit” recipes out there that instruct you in this process, but I don’t have any of them in my recipe library. On the off-chance you don’t either, I thought I’d share my process. Once you get the hang of it, these are very quick - I can have them ready in the time it takes to preheat the oven.

And if you have no interest in making these, that’s okay too! These biscuits are delicious, but so are biscuits made with Bisquick and biscuits from a can and even biscuits you pick up at the fried-chicken place. These just happen to be my thing.

Baking Powder Biscuits
makes 6-8 large biscuits

5 Tbsp butter
2 cups all-purpose or pastry flour
1 Tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
3/4 cup (or less) milk

1. At least half an hour before you want to make the biscuits, put the butter in the freezer. I generally freeze a whole stick, then thaw the extra 3 Tbsp afterward. I also just keep a stick of butter in the freezer all the time - if you get biscuit-addicted, you might want to do that too.

2. Preheat the oven to 425°F. Measure milk into a liquid measuring cup, then put it back in the fridge until you need it.

3. In a medium bowl, dump 2 cups of flour, then remove and reserve a few tablespoons of the flour. Add baking powder and salt, and whisk dry ingredients briefly to combine.

4. Remove butter from freezer and, using the largest grade on a box grater, grate 5 Tbsp of it onto a plate. Immediately add it to the dry ingredients and stir quickly and lightly until the butter pieces are coated and the mixture is even and crumbly-looking.

5. Take reserved tablespoons of flour and use them to lightly coat a small surface of clean countertop.

6. Remove milk from fridge and add to dry ingredients a couple tablespoons at a time, stirring to absorb the liquid. This is not like stirring a cake batter, more like pushing the dry stuff around so it soaks up the liquid and gets clumpy. You are trying to use as little milk as possible, so as soon as there are no more crumbs in the bottom of the bowl, stop adding milk. You will not have a cohesive dough yet, more like a bunch of pieces of dough.

7. Dump the dough pieces onto the floured surface and use your hands to push them together into a ball. You won’t get it all to stick together at first, but don’t worry - it’ll happen. When you have as much of it as possible sticking together, flatten the ball and fold it over onto itself, then turn 90 degrees and fold again. Re-flatten, then scoop up some of the crumbs from the counter and pile them on top of the dough. Fold it over the crumbs, re-fold, then re-flatten. Repeat as necessary until your dough has absorbed all the crumbs. You’re shooting for about 20 total foldings, but it’s okay if it’s a few less. Try not to do much more, and remember to use light, quick hands.

8. Grab your rolling pin, flour it lightly, then roll out the biscuit dough. I always make square biscuits, so I shoot for a square here, and mine’s about 8 inches by 8 inches. If you want round biscuits the shape is not as important, but that’s about the area you should go for.

9. Cut your biscuits: because I don’t mind squares, I use a straight edge to do this. If you want round biscuits, use a round cookie cutter, but be aware that any scraps you collect and roll and cut again will not rise quite as well as the first-cut biscuits. The important thing here is not to twist or drag the edges of the dough at all. Cuts should be straight up and down - push your cutting implement into the dough, then lift it straight out.

10. Place your biscuits carefully on a baking sheet. (It can be ungreased, but I usually use parchment paper because I don’t like to wash pans.) If you want to, you can brush them with a bit of milk or cream to make a nicer crust on top.

11. Bake 11-13 minutes, until set and golden. If desired, brush them with melted butter after you remove them from the oven. Eat them warm, and remember to share!

Notes
The biscuits will be lighter if you use pastry flour, but I usually use all-purpose and no one complains.
A straight edge for cutting biscuits can be a knife (I suggest a santoku if you’ve got one) but I like a bench scraper. My “bench scraper” is actually a $1 plastic putty knife from the hardware store (like this). It works well!

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