Biscuits
Biscuit Recipe adapted from Joy of Cooking. Ideally makes tall, fluffy, and lightly laminated short breakfast biscuits. A Southern specialty.
- 12 2-inch biscuits
- 15 minutes
- 15 minutes
Ingredients
- 1 ¾ cup flour
- ~3 tsp baking powder
- ½ tsp fine salt
- 6 tbsp cold butter, cut into pats
- ~¾ cup cold milk, err more
Directions
- Preheat oven to 425°F
- Mix the dry ingredients together in a large bowl.
- Cut the butter into the flour mixture with a pastry knife. Continue cutting until the butter grains are 2-5 mm in size.
- Stir in milk until dough coheres. If dough looks dry, add a splash more milk before combining further.
- Bring the dough together. Should be a pillowy mass with chunks of butter suspended in it. Turn out onto a lightly floured work surface.
- Spread out the dough and dust it with flour. Fold and turn it about 4 times, taking care that some flour gets in between the layers. Not much. Work quickly to keep the dough from warming, and don’t knead too vigorously.
- After 4th fold, flatten the dough out and spread it with your hands until it is about an inch thick.
- Cut out the shapes you want. I just tesselate the plane with a mix of triangles and quadrilaterals.
- Bake 12-15 minutes. Pull out when they have some color, but don’t let them dry out.
Notes
- Mixing and making the dough is fast. Make sure to start pre-heating that oven before you get started.
- It is easier to start with too much milk and balance it out with some more flour than the other way around. 3/4 cup is a pretty good benchmark, but it is better to do it by eye and hand, and add a bit more if your flour/weather demands it.