Quick Biscuits

Sometimes you don't have a lot of time or energy, but want to get a quick, tasty dinner ready. If you're like me, your go-to quick dinner at home might well be breakfast for dinner.

When I was in my early twenties, I discovered the joy of a good, quick scrambled egg (bonus points if you have farm fresh eggs, which I often due thanks to my lovely neighbors). Add in a frozen sausage patty (this is a Tyson patty from the local restaurant supply store, and I just leave a bag of these in the freezer most of the time), and you've got a quick, protein-rich and low-carb meal that only takes a couple of minutes.

But sometimes you just really want a flaky, salty, fluffy biscuit. You can go with a canned biscuit and I won't think any less of you. I just find that as I get older, I taste the preservatives more and more, and I wanted to see if I could find a quick, scratch-made biscuit that wouldn't take a lot longer than opening a can of Pilsbury (or more realistically, the bougie Trader Joe's version). I've now found that recipe.

 



These take maybe ten minutes to prep, and about twenty to bake. I want to try them in cast iron, and with fresher baking powder to try to get a little more lift in the biscuit. I'm lazy, so I do almost all of this in a food processor, and I cut the sugar. In this case, I used heavy cream because I had a Costco-sized carton that I need to use up (and because I generally don't keep milk and buttermilk in my house).

Ingredients (Shamelessly stolen from King Arthur)*

• 3 cups (360g) Unbleached All-Purpose Flour
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1 tablespoon granulated sugar
• 6 tablespoons (85g) butter, at room temperature cold
• 1 to 1 1/4 cups (227g to 255g) cold milk or cold buttermilk, (use whole milk for the most tender biscuits) heavy cream

Directions:

1. Heat oven to 425℉, and line a baking sheet with parchment.
2. Mix flour, salt, and baking powder in a food processor using pulses.
3. Cut the cold butter into roughly 1-inch cubes and add to the food processor.
4. Pulse roughly 10 1-second pulses. The mixture should look like coarse sand.
5. Add 1 c of cream to the bowl and pulse five times.
6. Add remaining cream and pulse five more times.
7. If the dough isn't sticking together yet, add additional liquid (cream, milk, or water) a few tablespoons at a time.
8. When the dough starts to coalesce, turn out onto a lightly-floured surface and form into a ball with your hands or a spatula.**
9. With a lightly floured rolling pin, roll the dough out until it's 1-1.5" thick.
10. Using a dough cutter or an inverted pint glass, cut individual biscuits out and place on the parchment-lined sheet tray. Continue until you cannot cut any more biscuits.
11. Either discard the scraps, or roll them into a ball, roll out to 1-1.5" thick, cut out biscuits, and repeat. [each successive iteration of this will produce tougher biscuits, as the dough warms from handling and additional gluten form in the dough. I generally set aside scrap biscuits and keep in mind that they're going to be less delicious.]
12. Brush the top of the biscuits with cream or melted butter. [Optional, but pretty.]
13. Put the biscuit-filled sheet tray into the oven. You're aiming for 18-25 minutes of cooking, depending on your oven, and I like to rotate them after 12 minutes or so.
14. Serve and enjoy while warm.
15. If you have a heart, share with your canine companion. [Denali managed a drive-by snaccing on Wednesday, taking a cake donut out of my hand while I was distractedly talking election results. She attempted to replicate her success with biscuits tonight; I'll have to be wary of this tactic going forward. But honestly, she's so cute she still got a piece of biscuit at the end of dinner.]

Tips:

• If you have a scale, use weights for baking (especially dry ingredients like flour, because who has time to sift?!?).
• Cold butter and cold milk/cream/etc. is ideal.
• The faster you work, and the less you handle the dough, the better they'll generally turn out.
• If you don't know how old your baking powder is, you should probably replace it.

* Strikethroughs show things I removed from the recipe, and underlines things I added.

** The faster you do steps 8-11, the better the biscuits will be as they will remain cold until they hit the hot oven.

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