in need of a biscuit recipe

[big country]

Like the title says, I need a good biscuit recipe! We made biscuits tonight from a recipe that we found online and they weren't very good. Very floury and with a very un-biscuit like texture.

So please, if you have a recipe that you can share I would love to try it out! Even better if it uses whole wheat fresh ground flour!

[Heimdhal]

Heres one of mine, a fairly standard and simple country biscuit:


11.60 Flour (AP) (3 - 3 1/4cups) (you can always add more flour if its not enough)
0.22 Salt (1 1/2 teasp )
0.58 Sugar (1 Tbsp)
0.58 Baking Powder (t Tbsp)
4.06 Butter-Cold (1 stick)
6.96 Milk-cold


The numbers on the left are by weight, I did a REALLY rough conversion on the right to volume measurments (cups, teaspoons, etc)
I make no promises as their accuracy because I dont use volume measurments :-[


But, taking that above, youll want to add/sift all your dry ingredients together (everything but the butter and milk)

Take your cold butter and cut it into the dry ingredients. That means to mix it all together by hand until the butter is incorporated into the flour in small chunks. Dont over mix. The smaller the chunks of butter, the mealy-er the dough will be, the larger the chunks, the flakyer it will be ( I like flaky myself).

When the butter is cut into the flour, THEN add the cold milk. You can use buttermilk if you want buttermilk biscuits (also tasty!). You want this to always stay cold, you dont want the butter to melt. Fold it all together by hand. Put it back in the fridge a little while if it starts to get warm and the butter is melting. Let it sit in the fridge a little while. When its good and cold, roll it out on a lightly floured counter top until its about a 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick slab. Use round cookie cutters to cut out circles (Press straight down, resist the urge to twist).

Put the cut out rounds on a greased baking sheet, in the oven at 350 till golden brown.

Hope that helps. It seems like more work than it is. In the time it took me to type this, I could have a batch in the oven, its not very hard and they come out pretty good ;)

[big country]

are your weights in pounds, ounces, grams, troy ounces, troy pounds...tons?

Also what do you use to weigh it all? We have a fairly cheap "kitchen scale" that is all analog, I don't remember the units but I think it is in ounces and pounds up to 5 lbs maybe? It's made in china plastic, I use it for measuring my long term food preps (grains, rice, etc) so I can have weights measurements on the mylar bags. Is this all I need? or do I need something more accurate? Any scale you recommend that won't set me back 10toz Ag? (or even 2toz/ag!)

Thanks for the rough measurements until I find out about my scale -- country biscuits is exactly what I was looking for. We'll give these a try! Ours tonight were very mealy, must have had to do with the butter like you said. I was hoping that you would post here Heim, I need all the baking help I can get!

[Heimdhal]

are your weights in pounds, ounces, grams, troy ounces, troy pounds...tons?

Also what do you use to weigh it all? We have a fairly cheap "kitchen scale" that is all analog, I don't remember the units but I think it is in ounces and pounds up to 5 lbs maybe? It's made in china plastic, I use it for measuring my long term food preps (grains, rice, etc) so I can have weights measurements on the mylar bags. Is this all I need? or do I need something more accurate? Any scale you recommend that won't set me back 10toz Ag? (or even 2toz/ag!)

Thanks for the rough measurements until I find out about my scale -- country biscuits is exactly what I was looking for. We'll give these a try! Ours tonight were very mealy, must have had to do with the butter like you said. I was hoping that you would post here Heim, I need all the baking help I can get!


Sorry bout that. Yes, they are indeed in ounces. This recipe, by weight, will make a total of 24 ounces of dough (1 1/2 pounds). I can scale it up or down for you, if you'd like.

The analog scales will be fine. I use a digitial one that also goes up to about 5 lbs, cost about 5-10 bucks at walmart/target, etc. Just round up or down. Its a pretty felixble recipe so a .02 difference wont matter much.

[Heimdhal]

Also, to cut the butter, it works best with a Pastry Blender, like this:

http://www.alliedkenco.com/catalog/images/PASTRY_BLENDER.jpg

THey are relativley cheap and really help with getting the butter blended in and cut to the right size. Works great for pie crust, pastries, etc.

If you dont have one, dont worry about it, you can make the biscuits just fine with out it, just use your hands to break the butter chunks up. This just makes it a little faster and cleaner is all.

[big country]

THanks for the help. Big help about the butter. I questioned my wife about it and she said the butter she used was frozen so she was afraid she wouldnt be able to mix it in cold (even though her recipe said to make it cold!!) so she melted it...We didn't realize that the butter was in integral part of the biscuit texture. Thanks for the explanation!


We also have one of those doohickies but I've never used it, actually had no idea what it was for! (my wife said she knew, but has only ever used it for pie crust...) Thanks a million! I'll report here when we try your biscuits. preciate it!

[hoarder]

If you must use baking powder, use aluminun free baking powder. Aluminum dumbs down your brain.

[big country]

Well we tried the biscuits and they came out a lot better tonight.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v89/maverick2003/IMG_0591.jpg

They were a little spongy/cakey but they were much more fluffy and tasted MUCH better then the little mealy disks we made the other night. Thanks a million for the tips and recipe! We used your volume measurements by the way since my wife couldn't find where I put the scale.

[Heimdhal]

Well we tried the biscuits and they came out a lot better tonight.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v89/maverick2003/IMG_0591.jpg

They were a little spongy/cakey but they were much more fluffy and tasted MUCH better then the little mealy disks we made the other night. Thanks a million for the tips and recipe! We used your volume measurements by the way since my wife couldn't find where I put the scale.


They look good to me!!!!


Glad to know my volume measurments werent that off since I just guesstimated on the fly. ;)

If you use the recipe again, try kneading the dough 3 or 4 times (but not too much) and that might take out the cakey texture of it. My fault for not mentioning that the first time. L :-[

[big country]

she also guessed on the milk measurement since there was no volume measurement posted. She said she knew what biscuit dough looked like and just added milk until it looked like she thought it should look. I dont know if that had anything to do with the texture?

Thanks for the help!

[Heimdhal]

she also guessed on the milk measurement since there was no volume measurement posted. She said she knew what biscuit dough looked like and just added milk until it looked like she thought it should look. I dont know if that had anything to do with the texture?

Thanks for the help!



Liquids have the same volume measurment as they do weight, for future reference. Again, my fault as looking back I should have mentioned that. A cup of most any liquid (milk, water, etc) is 8 oz, or half a pound. A Pint's a pound the world 'round, as the old saying goes. Sorry about that :(

but again, the biscuits look great, so yall did a great job!

[Olmstein]

Those biscuits look pretty good, Big Country. You need to cover them with some sausage gravy (http://gold-silver.us/forum/cooking/the-breakfast-thread/), though.

[big country]

she also guessed on the milk measurement since there was no volume measurement posted. She said she knew what biscuit dough looked like and just added milk until it looked like she thought it should look. I dont know if that had anything to do with the texture?

Thanks for the help!



Liquids have the same volume measurment as they do weight, for future reference. Again, my fault as looking back I should have mentioned that. A cup of most any liquid (milk, water, etc) is 8 oz, or half a pound. A Pint's a pound the world 'round, as the old saying goes. Sorry about that :(

but again, the biscuits look great, so yall did a great job!


Yep, should have known that. I knew that applied to water, but didnt think about it for milk. I'm sure its a little off on milk due to fats/etc, but close enough I'm sure. Also when my wife mentioned it I was focused on something else and kind of did the "uh huh, whatever you say honey" type of response. Thanks for the reminder.


Olmstein,
I'll try that gravy recipe next time we have biscuits and gravy, I LOVE biscuits and gravy!

[Heimdhal]

Olms right, those biscuits look just perfect for biscuits and gravy. One of my all time favorite meals. My wife is the sauce person in the family, I actualy suck at making sauces and gravies, believe it or not.

We use Cast Iron cook ware for most of our stuff and its hard to beat biscuits and gravy made in cast iron, theres just something about it.

I just picked up some beautiful whole rainbow trout today for dinner, so now I have a hankering to make some biscuits after all this biscuit talk. Garlic biscuits sounds like just the ticket! ;D