Master’s Sunday usually equals = SuperNap Sunday in this house. Couple the golf tournament on television with dreary/rainy conditions and this could have been a great nap-day. NO. We didn’t nap at all. My son did, the rest of us did not. Our fire alarm system is going haywire (problem assessed and fixed now) and we had to get an extension ladder to reach clear up in the craw of our ceiling where one of the units is. My husband gets freaked out while climbing on this ladder. The dang thing has some bounce and give. Oiy. I just stand at the bottom and steady it the best I can. We need permanent scaffolding in our house for changing light bulbs, cleaning the ceiling fan etc.
You can see the fire alarm unit between two of the ceiling fan blades up on the ceiling. What were we thinking?
Great view.
Moving right along… we needed to have something delicious and comforting for supper tonight. I’ve got a busy week of pitching lessons and the best part of the week will be the GEORGE STRAIT concert on Friday. Tonight I wanted to make something simple to go with our dinner and these biscuits were just that! Here are a few photos of the process and the full recipe follows.
I hope you had a great weekend!
Whisk the dry ingredients:
Cut in the butter using a fancy pastry blender or a fork:
Cut the butter in until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs, like this:
Add wet ingredients and toss together gently.
Turn out on a lightly floured counter:
Knead a couple of times to bring dough together. Roll out into a rectangle about 8×15 inches or so.
About yay (3/4 inch – 1 inch) thick:
Now comes the sorta-tricky part but this will make your biscuits have flaky layers.
Fold the dough in thirds like this:
And this:
Now give this dough one quarter turn and repeat the rolling/folding.
Finally, place in a zip top bag and refrigerate for a couple of hours. *You want to do this to re-chill the fat so when the warm oven hits the fat it releases steam and puffs your dough up beautifully. It will do this if the fat (butter in this case) is chilled.
When ready, roll out into a rectangle again (I KNOW… this is the third time we’ve rolled, but it IS worth it mate!) Press your SHARP biscuit cutter into the dough. Please ignore any desire to twist this cutter. If you do that, you’ll seal the edges of your biscuit and it will not allow the layers to form as delightfully. (*My cutter needs to meet the trash bag, it wasn’t sharp enough for my liking.)
Bake and devour.
Fluffy Biscuits
By Cristen www.foodandswine.com
Ingredients:
3 C all-purpose flour
3 TBSP sugar
1 TBSP baking powder
½ tsp salt
10 TBSP butter, cubed and well chilled
1 ¼ C milk
2 TBSP vinegar (regular or cider, not balsamic!)
For brushing on unbaked biscuits: Egg wash or heavy cream
Directions:
Combine flour, sugar, baking powder and salt in a large bowl. Whisk to incorporate. Add chilled, cubed butter and cut into dry mixture. Combine milk and vinegar in a small bowl. Let sit for 1 minute to turn to ‘sour milk’ (the vinegar will cause the milk to curdle creating a more acidic mixture like buttermilk, yielding a more tender biscuit). Add sour milk mixture to dry ingredients and butter, stir well. Turn out onto lightly floured surface. Knead dough about 5 times until it comes together. Roll out into a 12”x7” rectangle. Fold into 3, letter-style. Turn dough one quarter turn, roll out again to a 12”x7” rectangle. Fold again into 3, letter-style. (*see my photos above if you need help with this as it is hard to explain!) Roll the dough a bit so the folds are sealed. Chill dough for 20 minutes in a zip top bag. Preheat oven during this time to 425 degrees F. Remove dough from oven, roll to 1 ½” or 2” thickness. Cut out biscuits into 2.5-3” rounds with biscuit cutter. (Do not twist cutter, it will seal the edges and they won’t spring up in the oven and reveal their fabulous layers.) Place on parchment lined (or Silpat lined) sheet pan. Brush with heavy cream or an egg wash glaze (1 egg beaten with 1 TBSP water) sprinkle with sugar if desired. Bake for 13-16 minutes depending on the actual size of your biscuits, until golden topped and baked through.
Serve with room temperature butter, honey or any jam you’d like!
2 Comments
I love biscuits! I made some for the first time this year, but they weren’t as fluffy as yours. Maybe because I used self-rising flour. We also have a fire alarm on one of our vaulted ceilings. Hoping it’ll be ok for a while:)
Hey girl! I can help you through your fire alarm struggles if you ever have any! :) Self rising flour works just fine, I’m just used to this method. I used to order White Lily Flour from the south, that is the pure southern biscuit flour (lower protein content). I miss it but have so much other a/p laying around that I needed to use so I did. The folding will give you great layers, gracefully and gently… have that mantra on repeat when you are rolling/folding. :) Thanks for following along!