Sabrina,
It’s so, so tough being far away from family – I am sending you lots of love. I am so glad you were able to honor them through such a beautiful Easter feast. Pierogies, cheese balls, and Pillsbury cookies? A dream. And I want to try zurek! I’ve never heard of it, and as a fellow sour soup lover it sounds perfect.
You got me thinking of comfort foods from home, which, of course, brought me straight to biscuits. You’re shocked, I know. I love an American biscuit. It’s the perfect weekend breakfast – you can whip them up very quickly with basic pantry ingredients, but end up with something deluxe.
My mom and I have been slowly polishing our recipe for biscuits over the past few years. We started out with the New Basics Cookbook’s recipe and we’ve been slowly making tweaks any time we hear of a new technique. Many of our changes are to maximize flakiness. In the flaky biscuit vs. fluffy biscuit debate, I choose flaky. There’s something so satisfying about creating a towering biscuit that splits apart cleanly between its layers.
Some of the tips we’ve incorporated:
Grating and freezing the butter, which creates more steam in the biscuits to puff up the layers
Using half and half or buttermilk in place of milk, which adds richness (half and half) or tang (buttermilk)
Folding the biscuit dough a few times as you roll them out – this pseudo-lamination creates maximum layers
This makes ~6 big biscuits, so double it if you want extras. I like to make deluxe biscuit, egg, and cheese sandwiches, but they’re equally good spread with butter and jam.
Ingredients
5 tablespoons butter
2 cups of flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon sugar
½ teaspoon salt
¾ cup half and half (or buttermilk, for more tang) (milk also works in a pinch)
Method
Preheat the oven to 450F. Get a baking sheet ready and put some parchment paper on it.
Grate the butter onto a plate through the large holes of a cheese grater. Spread it out so it’s not in a big pile. Put the plate in the freezer while you do the next steps. Freezing the butter like this makes sure it stays as cold as possible. Colder butter leads to more steam once the biscuits hit the hot oven, which leads to more flakiness.
Mix up the flour, sugar, salt, and baking powder in a bowl.
Sprinkle the cold butter bits into the flour mixture. Toss it around so each little strand is covered in flour and they’re not sticking together.
Pour in the half and half or buttermilk and stir with a wooden spoon and then your hands until the mixture makes a shaggy dough. Try not to handle it too much so it doesn’t get tough. If there are dry crumbles in the bottom of the bowl then sprinkle in more milk until it coheres.
Once the dough comes together, plop it out onto a floured counter or cutting board. Pat it out into a rough rectangle until it’s about an inch thick. Fold it into thirds like it’s a letter. Turn it 90 degrees, pat it out, and repeat the folds (so that when you fold it again the folds are going the other direction). Do this one more time and pat it all out into the final rectangle. The final rectangle should be about an inch thick, maybe a little more. This folding technique is like a simple lamination, which will give the biscuits well-defined layers.
Okay, so now it’s time to cut them. The important thing here is to have something very sharp to cut them with. If you use a dull knife or cutter it will seal the layers together and make it harder to get lofty, flaky height.
If you want circular biscuits, get a sharp biscuit cutter and cut them all out. If you want square biscuits (or, if you’re like me and you don’t have a biscuit cutter) then take your knife and trim the edges of the dough rectangle so that each side has a freshly-sliced edge. Again, this helps with the flakiness – otherwise the folded sides won’t rise and you’ll get lopsided biscuits. Then, cut them into squares that are the size you want.
Put the biscuits on the cookie sheet along with all the scraps you trimmed off (the scraps make a nice lil’ snack). At this point, if you’re like me and you’re in a cold flat because London spring has not sprung, you can just put the biscuits straight in the oven. But if you’re somewhere warm and you’re worried that the butter is not still cold, then just shove the tray in the fridge or freezer for 20 minutes or so to chill them.
Then, bake them. It should take 12-15 minutes depending on your oven. You can tell they’re ready when the tops and bottoms are golden (pick one up to check the bottom) (no one likes a soggy bottom).
Then eat them with butter or jam or honey and salt. Or, maybe even make a bacon, egg, and cheese if you’re feeling deluxe.
A running letter between long distance friends who love to eat
Do you miss your best friend? Are really hungry you right now? If the answer to either of these is yes, you know what to do.