Biscuits. Just the sound of the word transports me back to childhood, to sitting on my knees on a bar stool in my mama’s kitchen, the smell of sausage and coffee, and a house-full of guests waking, stirring, coming out of rooms. If you stayed in my mama’s house, you got a breakfast in the morning that would impress Martha Stewart (if she’d been a southerner). I used to love to watch my mama work in the kitchen. I remember the bowl and the wooden spoon and the flour on the board when she made biscuits. She patted. She never rolled them with a rolling pin. My grandmother taught my mother to make biscuits and my mama took biscuits to the next level.
There is nothing like a sausage biscuit slathered with my mama’s strawberry butter. My favorite way to enjoy a biscuit is to poke a hole in the side with your finger and fill the hole with cane syrup. Cut a biscuit in half, top each side with country ham or a crab cake and a perfectly poached egg and drizzle with Hollandaise sauce. Take a leftover biscuit, cut it in half, butter lightly, and throw it on the grill while you make your eggs. Cut them with a 2-inch cutter and put them on the buffet with a pile of shaved ham and praline mustard sauce. Take this same dough, roll it flat and cut into strips. Put the strips into fridge for a couple of hours, uncovered. When they’re dry, drop into boiling chicken stock and enjoy the lightest, fluffiest dumplings you’ve ever eaten. You might also want to seriously consider making a batch of homemade chicken pot pie filling, cooking it in a casserole dish and then topping with the cut out circles of biscuit dough in the last 15 minutes for a chicken and biscuit pie.
For cheddar biscuits, follow the recipe exactly except, after grating the butter in, also grate in one pound of sharp cheddar cheese. Yum.
If none of the above sounds good, you could always use the biscuit dough to top your favorite cobber, apple, blackberry, peach, etc. Just be sure to add ¼ cup sugar in with your dry ingredients, brush the top with melted butter, and sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar or sparkling course sugar, or use this sweet biscuit dough to make biscuits for strawberry shortcake.
I like the flavor of a buttermilk biscuit. They're delicious and make your whole house smell good, but they can be quite dense. I don't like a greasy biscuits. Mama calls them "short" if they have too much fat in them. These can also turn into hockey pucks once they cool. I like a soft flaky biscuit. I think you should be able to pull the biscuit apart without cutting with a knife, but to achieve flakes you have to have exploding fat. You read that right, exploding fat. Without getting too technical, croissant dough, puff pastry dough, danish dough and the like, depend on layers of fat that when heated, release steam and leave air pockets behind (and the flavorful fat) making layers. I don't really want to stand in my kitchen on Saturday morning and fold layers of butter sheets into my biscuit dough, so I have come up with a short-cut that works really well to give me the texture and flavor I desire.
Start off by getting organized. Put all the ingredients and equipment you'll need on your work space.
Put your dry ingredients in the bowl and whisk to incorporate.
Then, as you grate your butter into the flour mixture, toss the flour and butter occasionally to prevent clumping.
Then mix the buttermilk and milk together...
and pour into a well in the center of your flour mixture...
stirring to combine.
I use a dough scraper from King Arthur Flour for this next part. This scraper is the least expensive tool in my kitchen and probably the one that gets used the most.
Scrape down the sides of the bowl and dump the dough onto your floured surface. I use a cutting board with a damp towel underneath to prevent slipping.
Don't over-knead your biscuit dough. This isn't like a heavy yeast dough that you are kneading to develop the gluten. Kneading your biscuit dough a few times in some flour makes it easier to roll out and cut without your pin or cutter sticking, or the dough sticking to your board. There is nothing more frustrating than rolling and cutting and then not being able to lift the biscuits off of your cutting board without destroying them. After kneading, roll out the dough with a rolling pin to the desired thickness.
Cut with a cookie cutter for best results. Cutting straight down through the dough without smashing the sides or twisting is important for the height and rise of your biscuits. Place the cut out biscuits on your cookie sheet. I like to bake mine on a stone.
Bake in the center of your oven, turning pan around once and watch them carefully. Take out when the tops are a golden brown. My kiddos like to watch them in the oven because you can see them rise and form layers.
There's nothing left to do but enjoy!
Amylynn’s Biscuits
Preheat oven to 450 degrees.
2 cups of Bisquick
1 ½ cups self-rising flour, plus more for your board
¼ teaspoon salt
1 stick very cold butter, real butter, salted
2/3 cup buttermilk (not lowfat) whole buttermilk, such as Marburgers
1 cup whole milk
Put the Bisquick, flour, and salt in a mixing bowl and whisk to incorporate.
With a cheese grater, grate the cold butter into the flour mixture, stopping a few times to toss the flour mixture over the grated butter to prevent clumping. Toss butter and flour mixture until butter is well distributed. I do this part with my hands.
Pour buttermilk and whole milk into a measuring glass and stir. Make a well in the center of your flour and butter mixture and pour in the milk mixture, stirring to combine.
Scrape down your bowl and dump the dough onto a floured board. Knead four or five times. Do not over-knead. Roll out with a rolling pin, only moving your pin from the center out, not back and forth across the entire surface. The thickness of your dough is a matter of preference. I roll mine to about an inch thick.
Cut out with a round cutter, a water glass or you can simply cut into squares with a sharp knife. Be sure to dip the cutter, glass, or knife in flour before each cut.
Transfer to a Silpat or parchment lined cookie sheet, a preheated baking stone or a cookie sheet sprayed with Pam.
Bake at 450 degrees in the center of your oven for around 14 minutes or until the tops are golden brown, turning after the first 7 minutes.
If you'd like, brush the tops with butter.