Biscuits

As I searched through all our stray paper on the cookbook shelf and in kitchen cabinets this morning, in search of the one crumpled, stained, smudged piece with the bisucuit recipe on it, I remembered the reason I started this blog. To keep all our favorite recipes in one place. So, here it is. Biscuits.

Seemingly very basic, we had a hard time making biscuits we were excited about. We tried all sorts of recipes, which are essentially all the same anyway. Finally, a cooking class for Christmas dinner, which included some scallion biscuits, cleared things up. The key to making moist, flaky, flavorful biscuits was in the technique. I think there was this Bisquick/Grands Canned revolution that took over for a generation, and we lost a basic cooking tradition. The replacement, via box or can, has never been a worthy one. These are so good, they are worth the extra 10 minutes of measuring and mixing. And I like to think they taste like what my southern great grandmother used to make.

The ingredients:

• 1 cup heavy cream + 2 T white vinegar (or 1 cup buttermilk or 1 cup sour cream. Buttermilk is usually pretty low-fat, so making your own soured cream with vinegar gives you the flavor of buttermilk and the moisture of cream.)


• 1/2 cup butter (put in freezer 20ish minutes before you will need it)


• 1 cup flour + 3/4 cup whole wheat pastry flour


• 1 T sugar


• 2 1/4 tsp baking powder


• 1/4 tsp baking soda


• 1/2 tsp salt

The technique:

• Preheat oven to 500. Turn it down to 450 after you put in the biscuits. (This is so all the heat you lose when opening the oven door doesn't get your biscuits below 450 and keeps them crisp on the outside.)


• Combine the dry ingredients.


• Grate the frozen butter with a large-hole cheese grater. Stir the butter into the dry ingredients. (The idea is to evenly mix in lots of tiny pieces of butter without letting it melt. You want the butter to melt in the oven, creating flaky biscuits, not in your flour, creating hard biscuits.)


• Add the cream or buttermilk and gently mix. Add more liquid if you need, to make a soft dough.


• On a floured board, use your hands to pat the dough into a rectangle about 1/2 inch thick. Fold the rectangle into thirds. Rotate the smaller, folded rectangle 90 degrees, and pat it out to 1/2 inch again. Repeat this for a total of 4 fold-overs. After the last fold-over, rotate again and pat out/roll with a rolling pin to 1/2 inch again.


• Cut into squares or rounds and transfer to a sheet pan. If you use circles, re-rolling the extras can over-work the dough and make the biscuits tough, so cut them close together to reduce re-rolling.


• Refrigerate until ready to bake, or put right in the oven. Remember to turn the oven down to 450 after the biscuits are in. Bake 12-15 minutes, until golden brown.