Biscuits again, with new additions!

I’ve been trying to make biscuits for a while, guys. The first recipe on here was a biscuit recipe, and I’ve made a couple versions since. Still, while fresh-out-of-the-oven biscuits often mask a multitude of sins, the fact has remained: my biscuits don’t rise, and they don’t have flakey layers.

No more! No more am I cursed with hockey pucks that I must slather in butter to make tasty! Instead, I‘ve got this recipe for biscuits, from the brilliant Girl Meets Dough, which lays it out for you, and let me tell you: the results are fantastic.

The things I was doing wrong: I didn’t keep the butter cold. She suggests taking super-cold butter, grating it into a bowl, and putting the butter in the freezer until right when you need it. Then, once the biscuits are all set out on the pan, you put the pan of biscuits into the freezer for 10 more minutes to get the butter firm again – it helps with flakiness to go straight from freezer to 450 degree oven!

I also was trying to substitute yogurt whole-sale for buttermilk. This time, I mixed milk, buttermilk, and just a few bits of vinegar because I now know that buttermilk activates the baking powder/soda and creates the leavening. Science! Basically, invest in buttermilk or use a real substitute, not just something that makes your dough look consistent.

The final change is her method of kneading. she flattens out her dough, cuts it in half, and stacks it on top, then does it again. It effectively makes strata in the dough, which I completely saw when I removed the biscuits after cooking. Even though kneading probably melted some of the butter, it hardened back up when it was in the freezer. It didn’t even waste any time because these biscuits work up so fast that my oven hadn’t had time to get to 450 – they froze while the oven heated up.

My houseguests this weekend said that the biscuits were delicious without anything at all on them, but they also loaded them up with grape jelly or bacon. 🙂 I mean it: if you too are under the biscuit curse, try this recipe!!!