These Biscuits Mean Business!

Bear with me a minute, because what I’m about to say is going to seem contradictory. Biscuits are incredibly easy to make. Biscuits are so easy to make, in fact, that it really is quite unnecessary to have Bisquick around the house, unless you happen to have a preference for trans fats in your food.
This biscuit recipe, however, is actually pretty complicated.

It is true that the standard recipe for making biscuits is quite simple. If you wanted to make a standard biscuit, you could use these exact same ingredients listed here, make your dough, take our your soup can, cut out some biscuits, bake them and still yield pretty good results. However, I don’t eat biscuits very often, and when I do, I want more than a “pretty good” biscuit. So the difference between this biscuit recipe and your ordinary biscuit recipe really comes down to procedure. This procedure is what assures you an unparalleled biscuit.

The process for making these biscuits is roughly the same as making puff pastry. In rolling and folding the dough in “turns”, the butter gets distributed in layers that cause the dough to puff up when baking and getting ultra crispy and flaky. If you are already familiar with baking biscuits, and are looking to add an extra X factor to your next batch, I implore you to try this method.

Shannon pointed out that the steps for this method are very much like making a legal sized sheet of paper and folding it like a business letter. Trying to maintain that perfect rectangular shape when rolling out the dough is a bit of a hassle, but the worst that failure to do so will cause is a few lopsided biscuits. Failure to maintain a perfect rectangle would be why only four of nine biscuits are shown in this picture. Ahem. If the layers can’t be properly maintained, things will rise crooked. For this reason, I prefer to cut them into squares instead of circles like your ordinary biscuit, since rerolling them tends to really skew the layers for the second cut biscuits. I’ve been known to call these “Biscones” since they’re sort of a a scone and biscuit hybrid.

This recipe can originally be found, more or less, in the Fall 2008 issue of Cook’s Illustrated.

Biscones

• 2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 tablespoons shortening or lard, cut into 1/4″ cubes
• 1/2 cup unsalted butter, frozen and cut into 1/8″ slices
• 1 to 1 1/2 cups low-fat buttermilk
• 2 tablespoons salted butter, melted

1. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.
2. Sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt together in a large bowl.
3. Cut shortening into the dry ingredients using a fork or your finger tips until only pea-sized pieces remain.
4. Take each slice of butter and press it between your fingers in the flour, making many thin, torn, flour-coated butter pieces dispersed throughout the dry ingredients. Toss to make sure that all the butter is coated with flour and then freeze the bowl for 15 minutes.
5. Meanwhile, spray a clean, dry counter or work surface with Pam, or coat it lightly with vegetable oil. Sprinkle enough all purpose flour over the oiled counter and spread it lightly with your hand until all the oil is covered with a light dusting of flour. This will give you a workable surface for the rather sticky dough and, even though it seems messy, will actually make clean up quite simple.
6. Remove the bowl from the freezer and incorporate one cup of the buttermilk with a fork, adding an additional half a cup if necessary to form a sticky dough that holds together, yet can be pulled away from the sides of the bowl. Make sure all the flour has been incorporated, but try not to overwork the dough.
7. Working quickly now so that the butter does not melt, transfer the dough to the center of your oiled and floured work surface, dust the top with all purpose flour and loosely pat down into roughly a 10″ square.
8. Roll the square out into a roughly 18×14″ rectangle about 1/4″ thick. The dimensions of the rectangle are less important than an even thickness and straight sides. Flour the rolling pin and add more flour as necessary to prevent sticking.
9. Use a pastry brush to lightly dust off any excess flour, then fold the rectangle over in thirds, like you would a business letter. Dust off excess flour once again and fold the sides in, again like a letter, to (hopefully!) form a roughly 4×6″ rectangle, roughly the size of a picture print.
10. Carefully roll the dough out again to an 18×14″ rectangle about 1/4″ thick and repeat the process of folding like a letter, adding extra flour as necessary to roll, but removing excess flour with a pastry brush when folding.
11. When you are once again left with a 4×6″ rectangle, roll it to roughly a 10″ square approximately 1/2″ thick, dust off the excess flour yet one more time, flip it over and cut the square into 9 equal pieces.
12. Space the squares roughly an inch apart on an ungreased baking sheet, brush liberally with melted butter and bake in the oven until the tops are nicely browned and the biscuits are firm, about 15 minutes.
13. Allow to cool slightly before serving to allow for carry-over cooking and prevent scalded mouths, then eat immediately to enjoy their crisp crust and fluffy biscuit interiors.