The Supermarket Gourmet

by Buck Reed

Biscuit Season

Tis the season to cook and, more importantly, bake. This is where you bring out those skills and let them shine on your dining room table. Now, no one would blame you if you just opened a can of premade biscuit dough, baked it, and put it on your table. Those store-bought biscuits are great in a pinch, but this is a prime example of “phoning it in.” Once you understand the technique of making good homemade biscuits, and realize that they taste about a thousand times better, you will wonder why you ever used the canned stuff.

First of all, making biscuits is all about the mixing method, which is actually called the Biscuit Mixing Method (quite a coincidence, isn’t it?). The key to this method is to keep everything cold, including your equipment and your ingredients. Putting everything in the refrigerator ahead of time is a good way to start.

Next, measure out your ingredients and gather your equipment. You should have flour, baking powder, and salt for your dry ingredients; butter or shortening for your fat; and some kind of very cold liquid ingredient such as water, buttermilk, or milk.

Mix all your dry ingredients together in a large bowl. You can sift your flour if you want to, but it’s not really necessary.

Then, cut in your fat, which means to chop the butter or shortening into little balls in the flour mixture, to about the size of a pea. Do not overmix.

Mix the liquid ingredients together in a separate bowl and add to the dry ingredients. Mix together until a dough forms and, again, do not overmix. What you should see is a mass of dough, flecked with pockets of fat. This is why we use cold ingredients, particularly the liquid, because we do not want to melt the fat.

On a floured surface, carefully knead the dough for a minute or two to bring it all together. Roll out your dough to desired thickness, and cut into biscuit shapes. I like to form a square and cut into squares or diamond shapes. Either store them covered in the refrigerator or bake as needed. You can make your biscuits a day or two ahead, and store them in the refrigerator until you’re ready to bake.

Here is how it works. As the biscuits bake, the dough starts to form the structure, while the fat melts and forms a gas. As this gas forms, it will expand inside the dough, making it light and flakey. Using this method, you can now make pie dough scones as well as biscuits. As with most things in the baking world, it is all about the mechanics of putting it all together that will help you make a superior product. And once you get that part down, every season can be biscuit season.