Thanks Pete Trachy!
Recently my dear friend Pete Trachy sent me this recipe for “the best” buttermilk biscuits. And indeed, they are. Yesterday Kai and I made them for a holiday party. Kai also came up with the idea of making an herb butter to go with them. I picked thyme and oregano from the garden and she made a creamy herb butter by chopping the herbs in and mixing it all together.
Today we are making batch # 2 for a baby shower.
Another thing to to note is that we only had whole wheat flour and pastry flour and they still came out amazing. The only thing we changed was adding a bit more buttermilk because the whole wheat flour is pretty dense.
Give these a try, there is nothing like biscuits out of the oven and into your life!
Fluffy Buttermilk Biscuits
1 1/4 C. cake flour
3/4 C. all-purpose flour
1 1/2 t. baking powder
1/2 t. baking soda
1/2 t. salt
1/4 C. butter, cut into small chunks
3/4 C. buttermilk
1. Preheat oven to 500 degrees
2. Prepare ingredients: Cut butter into small chunks, place in a bowl and return to fridge. Measure out buttermilk and set aside. Sprinkle flour on a work surface and have extra flour nearby for your hands and biscuit cutter. Have biscuit cutter and an ungreased baking sheet handy
3. Mix dough: In a medium-large bowl, whisk together flours, baking powder, baking soda and salt until very well blended. Add butter and cut into flour using a pastry blender, two knives or your fingertips, until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Pour in buttermilk and stir lightly until dough comes together in a ball.
4. Knead dough and cut biscuits: Dump dough mixture out onto floured work surface. With floured hands, lightly knead dough a few times until it is fairly well blended. Pat out into a circle, 3/4 – 1 inch thick. Dip cutter into flour and cut biscuits without twisting the cutter. Form the dough scraps into an extra biscuit-like shape instead of re-rolling the dough. Place cut biscuits together on the baking sheet so that the sides are touching. Brush tops with melted butter, if desired.
5. Bake biscuits: place baking sheet in the middle of a preheated 500 degree oven and bake for 8-10 minutes until they are golden brown. Remove biscuits to a wire rack to cool for a few minutes.
500 degrees!!! Wow!
You know, I keep making soup, and the other day I said, “Man, I should be making biscuits with all this soup!” and Dan was all, “What are biscuits? Like biscuits and gravy?”
Poor dude has never had just a biscuit.
Damn I look good.
In fairness I have to acknowledge that I cribbed the recipe from a blog called Pinch My Salt. The original post has some great tips that are worth reading.
One tip on the buttermilk, which can be hard to find out west amongst the pagans. The baking soda needs the acid of the buttermilk to act (remember those volcanoes in 2nd grade?). If you can’t find real buttermilk, just add 1 tablespoon of vinegar to a cup of milk. Let it sit for a 5 minutes or so and you are good to go. You can also do something with yogurt, but I am too lazy for that.
Also, if you baking powder expired three years ago and is caked up, you may get dramatically better results from buying some fresh.
I’m so happy to see californians appreciating biscuits!
Another tip – leave some of the butter in fairly large chunks and pat the dough into a rectangle. Then fold it onto itself in thirds, then roll it out again ( you can do that twice – it only gets flakier, but you want to let the dough rest for 30 minutes in the fridge to keep gluten from developing). This treats the dough like a puff pastry, stretching the butter into sheets & making the biscuit puff up in the folds.
I have been wondering how to get that flakier texture. I’ll have to try a few more batches and experiment with folding over the dough. I assume I would fold the dough over and then refrigerate it? Thx.