I am not sure if it's the recipe that is "fool" proof or if the "tricks" are what make this recipe work but either way it has taken me 17 years of marriage to be able to make a Homemade Biscuit that is worth eating.
Homemade Buttermilk Biscuits (original recipe)
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| Homemade Buttermilk Biscuits |
2 cups bread flour
8 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
2 heaping tablespoons sugar
1 stick COLD butter, cut into pieces
1 - 2 cups buttermilk (may need more or less, depending on flour)
Mix flour, baking powder, salt and sugar together in bowl of Kitchen-Aid Mixer. (If you do not have a Kitchen-Aid, or some other type of stand mixer, you can try this recipe using a hand held mixer).
Using your Kitchen-Aid mixer cut the butter into the flour mixture. Mix just until the butter becomes "pea" size.
Add just enough buttermilk to make a heavy, workable dough. I have found the drier the dough the more stable the biscuit.
Knead the dough lightly (still using your Kitchen-Aid), only enough for everything to stick together. DO NOT OVERKNEAD!
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| Dough Folded Over |
Use a floured glass or mason jar ring to cut dough into circles.
Place on an un-greased baking sheet (I use one of my Pampered Chef Stones). If you leave the edges touching it will make for a softer biscuit. If you want your biscuits to have a crunch, space them out a bit more.
Bake in a preheated 425 degree oven for between 10 and 12 minutes.
Cool on a wire rack (we actually eat them straight from the oven)!
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| Buttery, Flaky, Goodness |
HANDLE THE DOUGH AS LITTLE AS POSSIBLE, LET YOUR MIXER DO THE WORK!
DO NOT OVER-BAKE, SET YOUR OVEN TIMER AND KEEP CHECKING THEM!
This sounds like a marvelous biscuit recipe! I can promise you, coming from down South, that I have had AMPLE experience in learning how to make excellent buttermilk and even "sweet milk" - the kind you pour on your cereal, and the kids love to drink - biscuits! At 61, I can honestly claim to over 50 years experience in that realm, for NO self-respecting Southern girl can ever put on a wedding ring (I did at 19, thank the Lord and bless DH's heart!) without knowing how to do so!
ReplyDeleteHaving said this, I can tell you that these biscuits contain an equal amount of "credit" in the ingredients AND in the workin' of the dough.
First - the flour. THE most important component, as you can make biscuits of just edible to "Angel's Wings" lightness with a variety of other ingredients, but you simply cannot even begin without flour.
You used bread flour. This is a specially selected type of wheat, as well as the grinding or milling process. You already can imagine in your mind the taste and texture difference between cake and white loaf bread, right? That's the reason for it, besides a few other ingredients - the "crumb" that you get is so very different between the two. Having a special "soft" flour for biscuits is important, and if you cannot locate any of these in your grocery store, you can substitute the bread flour. If you're not sure of which is southern flour, I can tell you it's generally not the Gold Medal or Betty Crocker or whatever big name national brands, and especially not store brands, as southern flours come from certain strains of southern grown wheat, specifically known as "soft." The wheat grown in the northern and Midwestern plains is very different, and produces what's commonly referred to as "hard" wheat, and produces a much different product when used for baking.
I am not living down South any more, and am not able to recall the actual brand names we used to buy, but I think one of them had a name something like "White Lily"(?), and another had a picture of a knight in armor riding a horse on the bag. I will go and do some "Googling" in a few minutes and see what I can find out for you! If I find something diffinitive, I will come back and correct my post if I can, or just reply to it myself.
Another thing here is a combination of ingredient AND technique. That is the very cold butter chunks. Frequently that is a similar technique used in making pie crust, with the cold fat in little chunks. This is what produces the flakiness in pie crust, and the soft little layers in the biscuits. Not allowing the butter to get too warm lets it remain in little pea-sized pieces, spaced around within the content of the unbaked dough. Chilling the bowl, especially if it's metal, and the mixer utensil, whichever you choose - the whip or whisk works great in combining the cold butter and the dry ingredients, and since the mixer bowl on the Kitchen Aid, and the whisk/whip are all metal, they can take on and hold a great chill at the beginning of the process. Using really cold butter allows it to remain in pieces, even though they will get smaller as you go, and not become mush when it's mixed together with the flour. Don't use your hands at this point either! The warmth of your fingers will certainly warm up the butter much too quickly!
ReplyDeleteIf you don't happen to have a large mixer, or if this is beyond the capabilities of a small hand mixer, you can still make them quite successfully with two table knives, one in each hand, and continually mixing the butter into the dry ingredients using a criss-cross motion, until the butter/flour bits are, as you said, about pea sized. Then stop. You don't want them in crumbs, and you don't want to fool with it too long, allowing the butter to get too warm. I've seen some cooks use two forks like this, but I don't care much for the results, or the way the spaces between the fork tines gets full of mushy butter-flour mixture too quickly.
The best results you can get if you must do it manually, is with a hand held pastry blender. The best of these is the old-fashioned U-shaped wire kind, with a wooden handle that closes up the open space at the top on the "U" shape wires. There are probably 6 or 8 wires that make up the mixing side, and the wooden handle doesn't transmit heat from your hand while in use! I have one I sort of inherited just after I got married, and I STILL have it today! I keep the handle screw at the end tight, and keep it clean, and it still does a perfect job now, just as it did when I got it. (And as an aside, I have found it the perfect device for mashing cooked egg yolk for deviled eggs too! It does it quickly - I can get a dozen egg yolks perfectly crumbly in the tiniest pieces you ever saw, in about 30 seconds!)
ReplyDeleteAlso, the high level of baking powder to flour ratio always helps get higher, fluffier biscuits! 8 teaspoons to 2 cups of flour is generous, as the usual amount runs about 6 teaspoons to 2 cups of flour. Since 3 teaspoons equals 1 tablespoon, you can speed it up just a smidge by adding 2 tablespoons, and 2 teaspoons of baking powder to the flour.
The other thing about baking powder is to always make sure it's still fresh enough to have its pizzazz! The easiest way to check is to put about a quarter teaspoon in a small glass of cold water. If it fizzes right up, then you're good to go. If it just sits there, then it's time to invest in a new can of baking powder. It can lose its "ooomph" after sitting in the back of the cupboard for a year or more, without us ever thinking about it. Then we're suddenly encouraged to bake some new recipe we've found, but it's a complete dud when you've put in tons of work, time, utilities, and other ingredients, and can't figure out what happened! Likely as not, unless the can is brand new and freshly opened, that's what caused the problem.
It also reacts quite well with the acid in the buttermilk to create the gasses which fluff up your creation while baking. The reaction starts as soon as it's mixed together, but the heat of the oven encourages it a great deal.
The sugar some believe "feeds" that reaction, and it may have some effect on it. But, mostly sugar feeds yeast-raised baked goods. It could also help deflect a little of the sourness that may be created by the buttermilk and the baking powder alone. (And NEVER confuse it with Baking SODA! I've seen that happen before, with biscuits, and we ended up with little hockey pucks! No, it wasn't me!)
Beyond the ingredients AND the technique in mixing the ingredients, there is the matter of handling the dough, as soon as it's combined. Using a dough hook at the end of the process for kneading will work, or just for mixing in the liquid. BUT, the key is in how much you DON'T handle it just before it's cut into individual biscuits! In this case, a little bit goes a very long way. I never knead the dough once it's been mixed all together in the bowl and forms a nice dough. Not sticky is best, but you can still use it if it gets a little too sticky. Adding flour from the kneading/cutting surface is one way to go about it, but don't add a lot of flour that way, because doing so will upset the ratio of flour to raising ingredients. Just enough to make the surface easy to manage is all you need. And to be honest, I have cut the handling down to the actual barest minimum by patting the dough out on the surface of which it will be baking, and using a long, straight kitchen blade knife and cutting the biscuits in squares! No law exists that declares all biscuits must be round! Square, or even slightly rectangular is perfectly fine, requires NO "rekneading" of gathered up scraps from round cutting, is a quick, simple, one step process. You just may find that this way makes them easier to handle, cut/split and butter, or even dunk in your soup. Or, you can use them to make little ham biscuit sandwiches - another Southern delicacy you may or may not be aware of.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, the less handling the better - they will get plenty of handling while just out of the oven! Hope this has been helpful, or even a little educational! I just found your blog tonight, and decided to check it out! I like it! Best of luck to you!