It comes from the Better Homes and Gardens 14th edition cookbook, which is awesome, by the way.
What was the most useful about this cookbook is it explained how to substitute buttermilk and get the same results. apparently buttermilk is acidic, and in recipes with buttermilk there is also baking soda, and when those acid and baking soda collide there is that volcano action from our science project youth. so to subsitute you want to put one tablespoon of acidic liquid like lemon juice or vinegar into a glass measuring cup or a one cup measuring cup. then add enough milk to make one cup total. (not a cup and tablespoon, but a cup of combined liquid total). Rice milk works fine, thats what I use. let sit for 5 minutes.
3 cups all purpose flour (but I do half and half all purpose and half whole wheat successfully)
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt
3/4 teaspoon cream of tartar (just give up substitution and buy it)
3/4 cup cold butter (I found out you want it cold, cause I used to melt it and add it, so that when the butter melts in the dough while cooking it releases steam causing the flaky layers)
1 and 1/4 cups sour milk
this is a wet dough by the way
Preheat oven to 450 deg.
combine dry ingredients. (1-5)
cut up butter and add into dough. you can use a pastry blender, or two knives I have heard you can use, I rub it in with my fingers until its all flour/butter granuals.
make a well in center and add milk
stir until moistened. its pretty wet.
flour your board and kneed it a few times and pat it out until its about 3/4 inch thick (I guess) and cut out biscuits with a cutter or in my case a cup rim. cook for 10-14 minutes.
This recipe should cook about 12 biscuits. I always cut it in half.
some things I have found out or heard:
don't kneed them too much or they get ruined. I don't know the consequences, and I also don't know how much is too much. I've heard that from multiple sources.
secondly don't oil your baking sheet. I have done this. my bottoms cooked way faster, I think.
The recipe says not to do this, but I was scared of them sticking so I did it anyway. you don't need to.
3 comments:
Great post! I was wondering about the ersatz buttermilk recipe, I knew that there was one.
I went to make this recipe this morning and since I'm in love with the 1983 food processor Muffy gave me (a plastic piece broke off of it it's so old and I have to use a butter knife to press down the connecter part of it) I wanted to find out if I could fold in the cold butter using it. I went to you tube and found a recipe : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OinYhfllhbA
And it seems pretty simple with this appliance....some tips he gave, to answer some of your questions:
You only knead it 3-4 time (although i noticed he did it 5 times in the video) and kneading only consists of folding it over itself.
The consequences of over-kneading creates gluten and binds, creating more of a bread texture. Biscuits are supposed to be flaky. So everything about this is to create the most amount of flakiness.
He also just used a knife to cut the biscuits into shape, he just made squares. He says not to do anything that twists or pinches the the dough, like cutting and turning with a biscuit cutter. Again it's all about the flakiness.
I made your recipe today, because I had enough butter. They turned out great, but I have a bad habit of rolling out the dough too thin. Too thin for biscuits anyway, so they end up as flat biscuits. I'm so used to rolling out pizza dough....
Next time I won't roll them out very much at all really.
I am so excited your posting. I just saw all this stuff today. Thanks for the kneeding info, I have always thought that was just one of those things people say to do but no one knows why. If you have a food processor you can make pie crust better than I can. I need one.
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