What's the secret to making light, fluffy, taaasty biscuits? Mine always turn out resembling hockey pucks?
I cook almost every evening meal and weekend breakfast from scratch, and I do well on everything EXCEPT biscuits. My baking powder biscuits are dry, flavorless and an embarrassment. Do you know what I am doing wrong?
you spelled "biscuits" wrong Azrael. Nice try though..
Simple, easy, light biscuits recipe below. The difference is cream of tartar. I switched my recipe from baking powder to cream of tartar and they rise higher and are lighter. Everyone loves them. I also switched from shortening to unsalted butter (you can use regular butter, just adjust the salt down) and it makes them much more tasty. Also, DO NOT overwork biscuits, mix it all together with knives. Just "cut in" ingredients by running the two knives sideway passed each other until everything is wet. Biscuit dough doesn’t need to be kneaded. The less you work it, the lighter and fluffier they will be. If you do use a baking powder recipe, you need to make sure your baking powder is fresh.
Here is my recipe:
4 C flour
1 ½ tsp salt
4 tsp cream of tartar
2/3 C unsalted butter
2 tsp baking soda
1 ½ +/- C Milk
Mix dry ingredients. Cut in shortening using two knives. Stir in enough milk to make light and fluffy. Either drop by teaspoonful onto baking pans, OR knead, roll about ¾” thick (or so) and cut into biscuits, place on pan or sheet.
Bake at 425° until taps are golden brown – 12 to 15 minutes.
I press the biscuits out into a rectangle, then cut them into squares to bake. No waste, no kneading, much easier. The less you handle the biscuit dough the lighter they will be.
Biscuits cook very well on cast iron.
It could be not enough shortening or buttermilk.
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=what+makes+buscuits+light+and+fluffy
use more liquid and add flavoring -try flavored oils, flavored milks, or juice.
There is probably nothing wrong with your recipe. It sounds like you’re over mixing your dough. Mixing, kneading , and even rolling too much causes the gluten in the flour to develop and become rubbery. When it’s baked, you get heavy, often hard biscuits.
This is why with biscuit making it’s so important to make sure your dry and wet ingredients are well mixed separately before you combine them, and then mix to combine them as loosely and quickly as possible. You should still see small lumps of dry ingredients in the dough when you start cutting or spooning out your biscuits. These blend themselves in during baking.
It might be the baking powder, [and soda does this too] it has a shelf life of about 3 months, and less if it has been opened and not stored tightly wrapped. I got a surprise this Xmas with some flat cookies, Mom’s recipe had never failed me.
Also you could be overworking the biscuits, they don’t need much stirring, just enough to put the dough together.
The secret ingredient is love. I also cook everything from scratch, from Fruit Loops to my famous Chicken McNugget Burgers. Yet I never forget to put in 1 and a half teaspoons of love.
I’m going to go squeeze an apple and make some orange juice. I hope that’s the right way to do it. Did you know that there is "just add water" cornbread and that it’s delicious times ten? ….even if you make it in the toaster oven.
I laughed for a good 30 seconds at Azrael. Oh happy day!
I use the ones from the tin. The lil fat doughboy ones.