Friday, December 12, 2008

Food for thought: Easy Homemade Biscuits


These biscuits are soo good and very fast & easy to make. No need to use Bisquik or those canned biscuits with scary ingredients.

Drop biscuits save you the step of kneading and molding. I used a scoop with a release that came out really well.
Powdered buttermilk really saves the day and keeps for months in the fridge. Cold buttermilk is key, and you want the butter to be clumpy--it will make the little pockets of butter...Mmmm!

Makes 12 biscuits

2 cups (10 oz.) all-purpose flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. sugar
3/4 tsp. salt
1 cup cold buttermilk
8 Tbsp. (1 stick) unsalted butter, plus 2 Tbsp. butter for brushing baked biscuits. Melt butter, then cool for 5 minutes.

Adjust oven rack to middle position. Heat to 475 degrees (450 if your oven runs hot.)
Whisk dry ingredients in large bowl.
Combine buttermilk and 8 Tbsp. butter in medium bowl, stirring until butter forms small clumps (the size of a sunflower seed or popcorn kernel).
Add buttermilk mixture to flour mixture with a rubber spatula, until dough just starts to pull away from the bowl.
Using a 1/4-cup greased dry measuring cup or a greased ice cream scoop, scoop level, uniform amounts of batter on parchment paper. You need parchment paper or a silicone pad to avoid sticking.
Space batter 1+ inches apart. Watch closely, and bake until tops are golden brown and crisp, 12-14 minutes.
Brush with melted butter. Cool 5-7 minutes before serving.

Recipe from Cook's Illustrated, Nov. & Dec. 2007

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