Previously: Recipe #1 - White Lily and Lard
The less said about this batch, the better. I rolled 'em too thin, left them in the oven a minute or two too long, used too little liquid, achieved little to no loft, and skimped on flavor by switching from lard to vegetable shortening. Perhaps in the hands of a master biscuit maker, these factors wouldn't matter, but perhaps at this point, I need some training wheels in the form of commercial baking powder or self-rising flour.
My other muck-up -- I fell prey to fear of touching the dough too much and barely allowed the ingredients to mingle either during the bowl mixing or the kneading. While I've heard from all and sundry that overworking the dough is the kiss of death, there's got to be a happy medium. And hopefully a few sky-high biscuits.
Tips and more after the jump, and as always, I'd love any advice you feel like sharing.
Tips culled from books and friends thus far:
- I favor the drop biscuit over the cut biscuit. The irregular edges and spiky bits get crunchy in the oven, which adds a third texture (the other two being the smooth shell and the fluffy insides).
- If you do make cut biscuits, crowd them in your baking pan. They rise better when they push off one another, plus you get the pleasant experience of pulling them apart like dinner rolls. (Thanks to Christopher Bonanos for both of these!)
Variables
Flour: White Lily All-Purpose
Fat: Vegetable Shortening
Leavening: Homemade baking powder
Sift: Yes
Liquid: Buttermilk
Treatment: Rolled and cut
Sides touching: No
Greased pan: No
Heat: 500
Time: 10 minutes
Biscuit Recipe #2 (adapted from White Lily's Light All-Purpose Flour Biscuit recipe)
2 cups sifted all-purpose flour
2 tbsp homemade baking powder*
1tsp salt
1/4 cup very cold vegetable shortening
2/3 cups cold buttermilk
Heat oven to 500°F.
Sift flour and measure into large bowl. Cut in shortening with pastry blender or 2 knives until crumbs are the size of peas. Blend in just enough milk with fork until dough leaves sides of bowl.
Knead gently 2 to 3 times on lightly floured surface. Roll dough to 1/2-inch thickness. Cut using floured 2 1/2-inch biscuit cutter.
Place on baking sheet 1 inch apart for crisp sides or almost touching for soft sides.
Bake 10 minutes or until golden brown.
*Mix 1/4 cup cream of tartar and 2 tbsp baking soda and save in a glass jar for up to three months.
1-11-2009 @5:52PM Pat said... I've recently tried the "Touch of Grace" biscuit recipe from Shirley Corriher's Bakewise. There's a bunch of great information there on pros and cons of various biscuit ingredients. Her take on the ultimate rise is to make the dough extremely moist - much wetter than I ever tried before, and wet enough that forming is well nigh impossible. It did seem to work, though I think next time instead of the "toss the pieces in flour to form" method, I'll try just scooping it onto parchment with a medium-sized ice cream scoop.
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1-11-2009 @6:23PM Paul Franceus said... Too much leavening. 1 tsp per cup of flour, not one tbsp. And use some real stuff instead of the homemade. I'm not sure how reliable the homemade stuff will be.
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1-11-2009 @6:53PM MattT said... Got this recipe from Saveur or Gourmet magazine - can't remember which. Light, golden, buttery, impossible to stuff up.
2 cups self raising flour
3 oz / 90g cold unsalted butter, cut into 3/8" / 1cm cubes
1 cup full-fat milk
Preheat your oven to 450oF / 230oC.
Rub butter into flour, but don’t over do it - you want some pea-sized lumps of butter left in there.
Add the milk, bringing to together _gently_ with a fork to form a very soft dough.
Turn out on to a floured board, and _gently_ bring it into a flat shape about an inch thick with your hands.
Cut into biscuits with a floured glass (or a biscuit / cookie cutter, if you’ve got one). Bake 15 minutes or until golden. Makes about 12.
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1-11-2009 @7:10PM spamme_001 said... I love that you are working on biscuit making in this way. It reminds me of my own quest a year ago to try to make a low fat biscuit that still tasted good. That project ended up as a total failure, I just couldn't get any soft-flakiness without the extra fat.
I am sure you will be far more successful than I was.
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1-11-2009 @10:07PM John Hutch said... Try making biscuits with heavy cream. You can beat the heck out of them & all's well. And remember you can't learn if you don't make mistakes, blogging about it is another issue.
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1-11-2009 @10:42PM Kenboy said... I did the Bittman recipe recently with no real complaints. 2 cups flour, 1 tablespoon baking powder, 1 teaspoon baking soda, 1 teaspoon salt, 5 tablespoons butter, 7/8 cup buttermilk.
combine the dry, rub in or food-processor in the butter, add the buttermilk and stir until it forms a ball; dump on lightly floured surface, knead 10 times or fewer. 450 degrees, 8 minutes or so.
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1-11-2009 @11:15PM Jack said... Stop writing about biscuits, people don't care...
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1-12-2009 @8:14AM Dean said... Jack,
You may not care; but for some making a really good biscuit is a fun challenge. If you don't want to read about them, don't. But don't tell people not to write. That's just silly.
As for the entry itself, I've had decent luck with the Cooks Illustrated approach. It's a bit fussy but it works. Like another commenter said, don't overwork the dough and you'll likely get pretty decent results.
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1-12-2009 @9:17AM Jim said... I recently saw an episode on biscuits on 'Good Eats' AB's recipe is on foodnetwork. Also a reference to White Lily's being a very good recipe.
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1-12-2009 @3:11PM BenSS said... I've used Alton's and Bittman's biscuit recipes with great success. The two critical things (for me) are to make sure all the dry stuff is well mixed first, and don't even bother to "knead" it. I'm probably heavy-handed enough in the shaping that they turn out perfect.
As a side bonus, if you master handling biscuit dough, you know exactly how to handle gnocchi!
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1-12-2009 @6:53PM Monty Harris said... Jack's last name is Ass. Stop commenting Jack Ass no one cares what you think.
Fact is really good biscuits are an art.
Keep going Kat!
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1-19-2009 @3:15PM Amy McDaniel said... Kat, you are clearly inundated with advice, but as someone who takes biscuit making very seriously, I have to get a few words in. I think what you are doing is very cool, and I will eagerly read the results of all your experimentation. That said, I believe that making the perfect biscuit is less a matter of experimentation, and more the result of much practice. I do have my own tried-and-true rules: I would never stray from Martha White or White Lily self-rising flour, I wouldn't dream of omitting buttermilk, and I've never even considered rolling and cutting instead of dropping as my grandmother did. I never use butter unless I want to brush some on the top toward the end of baking, and now that Crisco has been reconfigured to omit trans fat, I would tend toward lard. Also, I don't so much as touch the dough between adding buttermilk and dropping sections into the pan--instead, I shake the bowl to combine everything, another tip from my grandmother. Still and all, you might find another method/combination you like better--the key is repetition. There is one key variable that you seem to have left out, though, which is the cooking vessel. Please consider using a cast-iron frying pan, generously greased with fat. The extra-brownness on the sides and bottom of the biscuits (which should be nestled in close together) is unbeatable. As an added bonus, those who (like me) prefer a crustier biscuit can take the ones from the edge of the pan, while those who like more soft white interior bread can choose interior biscuits.
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