A Basket 'o Biscuits

After my last post, I found myself thinking about biscuits. I make a decent biscuit. Maybe not even that - more of an okay biscuit. And I'm not terribly consistent. I decided it was time to work on being able to make very good - or even excellent - biscuits without having to deal with hits and misses. And I got there. Where, however, is there? What am I looking for? Glad you asked. Well for starters there is height. I really don’t like a flat biscuit. I once had one (that’s had one, not MADE and had) that was so flat I couldn’t even slice it in have to slather it in butter. Quel domage! So I wanted them to rise well. I never used to read the best before date on baking powder, because I made so many scones and pancakes and so on for both family and the business that I just never thought about it. I’m glad that I decided to do that. I only buy the little containers and I’d purchased the one I had when we moved, September of 2011. I should have read the label when I bought it: best before date was already past when I made my purchase! So the first thing to do – along with buying some buttermilk – was to get some new and active baking powder.

Along with height I prefer to have certain straightness to my biscuits. I’ve taken many a tray of b’s out of the oven to find half of them leaning like little eatable towers of Pisa. So I wanted them to be able to rise high and evenly. Turns out there is a small trick to that: knuckling. I don’t imagine that’s what it is actually called, but making a small indentation in the middle helps them rise evenly. I’ve been given baking tips and tricks that work and tips and tricks that don’t. This one does. Backwards as it may seem, while I struggle with good biscuits, I’m great with puff pastry and croissant. When I have the time and inclination, that is! It turns out that the best way to get tender flaky biscuits is similar to achieving tender flaky croissants. Similar, not the same! Don’t worry, I’m not about to give you some long drawn out directions for biscuits that take away the beautiful ease and simplicity of biscuit making. The main changes that ended up making the difference were temperature and mixing. For temperature, instead of using chilled butter I sliced the butter, and then froze the slices. And I measure out the buttermilk and put that in the freezer too. Not long enough to freeze: I only put it in there when I decided to make biscuit batch 2.2. I sliced 7 ounces of butter fairly thinly and put them on a parchment lined plate in the freezer. Then I measure 1 ½ cups of buttermilk and put that in the freezer too. THEN I started getting bowls and so on ready. I made a double recipe this time, as I was making biscuits to go with rotisserie chicken for four, and needed to have some leftover for The Boy to snack on later in the evening. I should have made a triple batch, so everyone could snack on them later. ‘Cept me. I prefer mine hot out of the oven. Anyway, I digress. Just thought I’d mention that you’ll get more than six out of this recipe, should you try it. Four cups of flour in a fairly large bowl, four teaspoons of baking powder and one teaspoon each of baking soda and salt. I whisked them together. Not something I normally do, but then again, I was having problems with my “normal” method! So I did as recommended and fluffed them up. Fluffing being my term, not any of the recipes I was looking at. Next I took the moderately frozen butter out and tossed them in the flour before I started cutting it in. I have fond memories of mum using knives to blend butter or shortening into flour, and have done it myself on occasion. Good memories, but I always just use the pastry knife thingy now. Still easy to make sure you don’t over process, and nowhere near as tiring! When the blend looked like tiny peas, I made a well in the centre and poured in the buttermilk.

And here’s where things changed from my usual method. Instead of mixing it until it was a smooth cohesive dough I used a spatula and folded it until it was a barely together crumbly shaggy dough. Then I put it on a floured board. I sort of squeezed it together and patted it down. It was still really messy, and pieces were falling off. I put those on top, and folded a third into the middle from the right and a third into the middle from the left. And then I sort of patted it out again, using my hands, not a rolling pin. There were crumbs from the bowl, and one or two from the edges. I put those on top and did the folding again. This time it was a bit smoother. Another fold, and smoother still. In the end I did the fold five times. When I’d done the 5th fold I used a rolling pin and rolled it out to 1 inch thickness. I used a two inch circular cutter. Next time I will just use a very sharp knife or pizza cutter and make squares. The ones made from the re-rolled bits after the first round were truly not as good as the rest. I put them in a 425F oven, middle rack for the second tray. First tray was one rack lower and the bottoms cooked too quickly so I moved them up one for the second tray. Oh yeah, one other thing: brush the tops lightly with buttermilk! Phew. Almost forgot that, and it made a difference to the final outcome. Those without weren't as aesthetically appealling. In the end they were exactly what I wanted. And despite making them to take over to La Maison for a roast chicken side dish, I confess to eating a number of them (a number that will never be revealed) hot out of the oven, slathered with butter and dripping with honey. And they were good. Very good. How good? The Boy LEFT HIS COMPUTER GAME to come out and cover a fair few with butter and honey before going back to his gaming buddies. Now THAT’S a biscuit!