the-oven biscuit but making them from scratch yielded gummy, dense discs. Those things in the can are okay but they really aren't biscuits, they are biscuit-shaped rolls. While I like Bisquick for making pancakes and waffles, I had no success using it to make biscuits (see above "making them from scratch"). When Pillsbury came out with the frozen Grands! Buttermilk Biscuits, I finally could bake a decent tasting biscuit that wasn't the density of a manhole cover...but it still wasn't quite right.
Then I saw Jeff Mauro on Food Network's Sandwich King show, baking biscuits to use as buns for a sandwich. He uses his mother-in-law's recipe and he talked about the keys to making her delicious, light biscuits: self-rising flour, buttermilk, and cold, cold, COLD butter. I decided to give biscuit making another try and printed a copy of Grapevine KY Buttermilk Biscuits.
My first attempt was messy. Like I always do with a new recipe, I followed it exactly and ended up with a big bowl of gooey dough. I managed to work some of it into biscuits and they were pretty darn good, better than anything I had ever baked. I learned two things from that first attempt: first, a full recipe made far too many biscuits for us, and second, adding in the recipe amount of buttermilk was a mistake. I needed to gradually add in the buttermilk until the dough looked and felt right.
Now a word about buttermilk. I had long relied on powdered buttermilk as a substitute for fresh buttermilk. While convenient, the powdered version just isn't the same as fresh; not in the viscosity, not in the tang. I now keep fresh buttermilk on hand and use it not only in biscuits but in bread baking and for making cornbread.
Back to the biscuits. Once I got the hang of adding just the right amount of buttermilk to make the dough come together but not get pasty, producing a delicious biscuit was easy. I bake biscuits on a cast iron griddle pan that I coat with a thin layer of bacon grease, then place in the oven to heat. The biscuits make a faint sizzling sound when placed on the hot griddle and develop a satisfying crisp bottom.
We were very happy in our version of Biscuitland when one of my favorite food bloggers, Foodie with Family, wrote a post about buttermilk biscuits. She attended a King Arthur Flour demo as we did last year and while we learned about making pies and scones, Rebecca learned about pie crusts and biscuits. One of the eye-opening tips she gained: as with pie crusts, you should add the butter in two different sizes/steps, which yields a biscuit that is tender and flaky.
Rebecca also folds her dough over several times to create layers within the biscuit. This can be a bit tricky because you never want to overwork biscuit dough or you end up with the bread equivalent of a hockey puck. I was a bit nervous the first time I tried her method but the biscuits turned out beautiful with lots of flaky, tender biscuits.
The final tip I learned from Rebecca is to brush the tops of the biscuits with buttermilk before baking to give them a glossy brown top. I had previously brushed the biscuits with melted butter as Jeff Mauro does, but we found that we like the buttermilk version much better.
Note: I am not a food blogger, so I don't write step-by-step instructions illustrated with photos. Foodie with Family is, however, a food blogger (and a very good one) so go on over to her buttermilk biscuit recipe and tutorial to see and read how to make perfect biscuits.
With the help of Jeff and Rebecca, it is now quite easy for me to produce beautiful, delicious biscuits:
As you can see in the photo, I deviate from Foodie with Family's recipe by continuing to bake my biscuits on the hot cast iron griddle rather than a parchment lined sheet.
Smothered with sausage gravy, stuffed with country ham and drizzled with honey, or slathered with just butter, there is hardly anything tastier for breakfast than a hot buttermilk biscuit. I learned from two excellent teachers and, who knows, maybe my biscuit method will evolve again with another source of information.
