Recipe Thursday: Biscuits

It’s Recipe Thursday again! That means that it is almost Friday and the weekend. Today, I’m going to share the biscuit recipe I’ve been using to accompany my soups for the past few weeks.

The recipe I followed, from my Joy of Cooking, also found online.

 

As you may recall, as much as I love the precision of baking and following recipes, they inevitably end up as a guide for me. So, naturally, I did alter the steps and execution a bit. But only for the rolling out and cutting of biscuits.

Instead of a rolling pin, I used my hands to flatten the dough after kneading. This was for a few reasons: (1) it felt better to do so and (2) I have a French style rolling pin that I got in Novgorod in 2003. My rolling pin is very light-weight, and doesn’t really, well, roll things out very well. It sure is pretty, though!

Instead of a biscuit cutter or glass to cut out biscuits, I used one of my pastry knives/bowl scrapers to cut the dough into strips, then into rectangles. **An aside: what they are calling “bowl scrapers” I grew up calling “pastry knives.” I also used these to cut the butter into the flour mixture.**

Here is where I was confronted with a bit of a conundrum. I had lopsided rectangles and squares, not circles.  I figured that I could simply shape them into ‘biscuit-shapes,’ like one does with the inevitable remnant dough. To do so, I ended up folding each dough-quadrangle over onto itself several times, until I ended up with a rough circular, or at least oval-esque, shape. A more realistic yield is 8-10 biscuits.

I also omitted the “brush the tops with milk or butter” step. I almost always do. Partly due to laziness. Partly out of a desire to have fewer dishes to wash up.

I was not exactly expecting miracles or anything when I pulled them out of the oven, 12-15 minutes later. But what I found was pleasantly surprising. Layers! Holy Toledo, Batman, I made layered biscuits that sort of pull apart! (You can also see some homemade freezer jam in the picture, scrumptious!)

As far as flavor, they are basic biscuits. If you tend towards the 6 tablespoons of butter, as opposed to 4, they will be a bit more flavorful. They aren’t exactly flaky, nor are they as tender as the frozen Grands, but pretty darn good for a novice biscuit maker!

Why didn’t I just buy a bag of the frozen Grands? Because at $3.60 for a bag of 12 biscuits at my local Marsh (last time I checked), homemade biscuits are a heck of a lot cheaper. Especially since I did have everything on hand. Are you interested in a price-breakdown for biscuits? I’d be happy to attempt one.

Do you have a stand-by biscuit recipe that you love?