Biscuit quest
Biscuits have mystified and intimidated me all of my Northern life. One needs a "delicate hand" we're told. Biscuits should be tender, flakey and impossibly tall. The ideal of Southern cooks can make biscuits without measuring, knowing only from the feel of the dough how much to add.
Even being born in the South is no guarantee of biscuit prowess; witness the scene in To Kill a Mockingbird when Scout complains of home ec class, and the rock-hard biscuits she made.
(I'd also like to say we'd never think of wasting good food on sartorial concerns.)
So, because the idea of carbs + fat for breakfast is appealing, I've been testing biscuit recipes with the help of two excellent baking references. The heavy cream biscuit recipe in Dorie Greenspan's Baking: From my Home to Yours are absolutely the easiest ever. No cutting butter, just mix, knead briefly, cut, and bake. For a fast breakfast, these are your biscuits. They are not, however, the best. Nick Malgieri's butter biscuits in How to Bake had better flakiness and lift than the Greenspan's cream or butter biscuits. But Greenspan used less flour and more butter for better flavor.
Each author had recipe variations, but none were really the perfect biscuit. One morning, desperate to use up a quart of buttermilk, I tried Greenspan's buttermilk variation, upping the baking powder to the two teaspoons that Malgieri used. (Why is buttermilk sold by the quart, when one only ever uses a cup before it goes bad, but heavy cream is sold by the half pint, when it keeps forever?) The biscuits were perfect, and the key is the buttermilk, which seems to tenderize the dough sufficiently to overcome any overkneading:
2 c flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
2 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp salt
6 Tbs butter, cut into pieces
3/4 c buttermilk
Preheat oven to 425 degrees.
Wisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, sugar and salt. Cut in butter until pieces are very small, about pea-sized. As Greenspan points out, some pieces will be smaller. Mix in the buttermilk until the dough starts to hold together. Dump onto your kneading surface and knead gently until it begins to hold together; Malgieri recommends a fold-and-push technique that will create lots of layers. I find the buttermilk doesn't absorb all the flour in the bowl, so no extra flour is needed.
Roll to a half inch thick, and cut with a round, two-inch cutter (don't twist!). Bake on a cookie sheet for 12 to 15 minutes until golden brown.
An additional great thing about these is the lack of eggs. Not that I run out of eggs that often, but when I do, it throws a wrench in any weekend breakfast plans. And you can substitute whole milk for the buttermilk, and skip the baking soda; or substitute whole milk and add two teaspoons cider vinegar for the buttermilk.