Foodist: Recipe Road Test
Buttermilk Biscuits
The mighty buttermilk biscuit has taken hold in my house over the last year.
This may have something to do with the locust nature of growing teenage boys who scour the pantry, the refrigerator, the counters when they get home from school, seeking some sort of taste treat, some sort of immediate sustenance that will stave off the vicious pangs of ever increasing hunger. Toast appears to be the default. If all else fails, there is toast. And that makes it extremely difficult to stay ahead of the bread situation in the house.
I kept turning to biscuits as a last minute replacement. No bread? Fine, I'll bake biscuits to go with eggs, to have with soup, to accompany that dinner salad. But the one recipe I shared some history with was more of a special occasion biscuit, a plan-ahead biscuit. It called for heavy cream, not something I usually keep in the refrigerator. Buttermilk's another story. I'm always picking up a quart of buttermilk to have on hand. Thus the quest for a good buttermilk biscuit.
I finally found it on-line after producing far too many textured semi-flat circular baking products. The recipe was part of Amazon.com's coverage of Christopher Kimball's book The Yellow Farmhouse Cookbook. Kimball's the guy behind Cook's Illustrated.
You can see the recipe for yourself at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/feature/-/4189/002-6624307-2102658, as well as information about the book. I'll include the recipe below. I have never made a lousy batch of these biscuits, and I don't know why. If you look at a half dozen different buttermilk biscuit recipes, they all fall within the range of this one. And yet. And yet. This is the one.
That said, I don't follow the directions to the letter. I don't own a food procssor, so I whisk the dry ingredients together. I cut in the butter and shortening all at once with a pastry cutter (I get the butter out of the fridge, chilled, but rarely chill the shortening: biscuits in my house are a no planning, last minute, whip them up and out of the oven in under 15-minutes kind of thing), and I mix the ingredients together with the buttermilk with whatever's at hand, often a fork. And I can't be bothered with a rolling pin, so I flatten the dough with my fingers and I cut out the biscuits with a wine glass. I've been meaning to invest in a biscuit cutter but every time I have the chance to buy one I forget. Oh well. One of these days.
Buttermilk Baking Powder Biscuits
From The Yellow Farmhouse Cookbook, copyright 1998 by Christopher Kimball.
- 2 cups flour
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- ½ teaspoon baking soda, the fall back
- 4 tablespoons (½ stick) chilled butter
- 3 tablespoons chilled vegetable shortening
- 2/3-¾ cup buttermilk
- Heat oven to 425 degrees. Combine the flour, salt, baking powder, and baking soda in the bowl of a food processor. Process for 2 seconds to mix.
- Add the butter, cut into 1 tablespoon bits, to the flour and pulse 7 times for 1 second each. Add shortening and pulse another 6 times or until mixture looks like coarse meal (the flour should take on a slightly yellowish hue from the butter).
- Place mixture in a large bowl. Using a rubber spatula, fold mixture together while adding buttermilk in a very thin stream. When mixture starts to hold together, press the dough with the side of the spatula. Note that you may use a little more or less than the 2/3 cup buttermilk called for in this recipe.
- Turn onto a floured surface and use a rolling pin to roll out dough very gently to a thickness of 1/2 inch. (You can also simply flatten the dough with your out-stretched hands instead of using a pin.) Use a biscuit cutter to cut out rounds, pushing the cutter straight down without twisting. Arrange biscuits at least 1 inch apart on a cookie sheet and bake in the preheated oven for about 10 minutes, turning sheet front to back after 5 minutes in the oven. Serve hot.
Makes ten thick 2 ¾-inch biscuits or sixteen 2-inch biscuits.
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