Confession, I would never have taught myself to make biscuits if it had not been for Amazon. I frequent Amazon when I am bored, watching tv, yelling at my dogs, or a combination of the three. My debit card is linked to my account and I have a free Amazon Prime membership. This results in frequent purchases, usually of cookbooks or travel related books. I happened to be browsing Amazon when I checked the selections that the evil consumer driven people at Amazon recommended based on my recent purchases. I saw Southern Biscuits and I knew I had to own it. Never mind that I never made a biscuit in my life. I saw it, I coveted it, I had to have the cookbook and I had to learn to make biscuits.
So two days later the doorbell rings and the book is at my house. I raced to Albertsons to stock up on buttermilk, flour (all purpose and self rising,) baking powder, and butter. Needless to say that my fridge is now full of all kinds of fat (butter and shortenings, salted and unsalted) and my pantry is full of flours (cake, AP, self rising, bread.) I decided to make the basic baking powder biscuits which is the "beginners" recipe. I read the instructions and tips to get the lightest and flakiest biscuits. I gathered my ingredients and tools. I was ready.
First thing is first, biscuits are simple and cheap to make. They require few ingredients and little time. Only one recipe in the book requires yeast, which means that you do not have to wait around for the dough to rise. You can bake biscuits on a cookie sheet for a crispier texture or nestle them all together in a round cake pan for softer biscuits with less crispy surfaces. I recommend that if you want to make biscuits a hobby, and lets be honest everyone loves biscuits, that you buy a pastry cutter.
I got a pastry cutter, also known as a pastry blender, as a wedding gift. It is good for making pie crusts and other doughs. Definitely worth the less than twenty dollar investment if you like to bake. I chilled my pastry cutter so that the butter stayed cold when I blended it with the flour mixture. You might be thinking that the idea of chilling a metal tool sounds silly. Well, one of the tricks of flaky biscuits is cold air. You use chilled butter so that the butter puffs up and creates steam when you bake the raw dough. By chilling the pastry cutter, you keep the temperature of the dough down and thus you have a better chance at flaky biscuits. Note, I also chilled the dough in the freezer for like two minutes before I rolled it out (don't freeze the dough just get it cold!)
Secret number two is handling the dough as little as possible. This means when you roll the dough out and begin cutting biscuits that you should handle the dough as little as possible and try to get as many biscuits out of the first roll. The more times you gather and re-roll the dough, the tougher your final product.
Last tip- don't spend your money on a fancy biscuit cutter. I used a mason jar! Because I make jam and pickles, I have a plethora of different sized jars. Save your money and re-purpose your old jars, beer bottle, etc.
The basic baking soda biscuits were delicious and amazing hot out of the oven. I am going to make angel biscuits this week (they require yeast) and the sweet potato biscuits will grace our Easter table. My plan is to make the savory variation of the sweet potato biscuits from the cookbook and make little ham biscuits out of them with some Virginia ham from the store. It isn't Easter without ham, so instead of making a big one for just the two of us, I will make sweet potato ham biscuits instead!
*Sorry about the picture quality, I used my Droid instead of my camera this time!
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| Ate these with some homemade strawberry jam (second batch!) |
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| The steam off the biscuits interfered with the camera on my phone! |
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