Ever since graduating college, I’ve been making biscuits. I make the same kind without fail – Better Homes and Gardens Biscuit Supreme. Like chocolate chip cookies, I have the biscuit recipe committed to memory. Forget admonitions of using certain kinds of flour or adding buttermilk or cream, it’s all about how you handle the dough.
2 cups flour1 Tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons sugar
1/2 cup of butter cut into pieces
2/3 cup of milk (plus more for moistening)
Heat the oven to 450. So mix all the dry ingredients in a large bowl (I like using a whisk). Add the butter and with a pastry cutter, cut until you get pieces the size of peas. If you don’t have a pastry cutter, cut the butter into as small a piece as possible. So here is my key tip for making flaky, tender biscuits – use your hands. Using your thumbs and fingers, rub the butter and the flour together and flatten out the butter. You can see how to do that here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0kQh8z_Jos Go to :42 to see the demonstration and ignore her telling you to use White Lily. That’s a load of hooey. Any all-purpose flour will work fine. Once the butter is in good shape, add the milk. Mix with a wooden spoon until the dough comes together. Turn out on a floured board and knead a few times until the dough is a fairly uniform consistency (no super wet spots or super dry spots). Press out to about 1 inch deep and cut into biscuit shapes (I use a glass). Once you cut the biscuits, knead the scraps together and cut more biscuits. Put biscuits onto a greased pan (or in my case a Silpat thanks to my sister!) and bake for about 15 minutes on the middle rack.
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