Cleaning Out the Pantry – Biscuit Bliss

As I’ve mentioned before, my favorite magazine is Fine Cooking. I keep every issue, and re-read them again and again. I also dislike wasting food, so when I found myself with some buttermilk and habanero pepper cheddar that needed to be used up, I turned to Fine Cooking for inspiration, and I found it in Peter Reinhart’s biscuit recipes in issue #85.

To produce flaky layers, Reinhart employs a folding method akin to the one used for puff pastry. I made two batches of biscuits, one plain and one with the habanero cheddar, cut them into rectangles ( I didn’t want to have to re-roll anything), and froze them. For the past couple of weekends, I’ve popped them frozen into the toaster oven for a tasty breakfast treat.

The original recipe calls for baking them at 450°F, which is fine if they are not frozen (the intense heat will give the biscuits a lift and produce flaky layers), but I’ve had great results baking them fresh or frozen at 425°F. More after the jump . . . .

The cheese biscuits in particular have been a huge hit. Are they the flakiest biscuits I’ve ever had? No, but they are flaky, and the flavor is out-of-this-world. They freeze very well, if you wrap them carefully. And if I were to pass along one piece of advice, use a flavorful cheese for the best results.

 

Flaky Cheese Biscuits
Adapted from a recipe by Peter Reinhart in Fine Cooking #85

Makes 10-12 biscuits

8 oz. (1-3/4 cups) unbleached all-purpose flour; more as needed for shaping the dough
1 Tbs. granulated sugar
2-1/4 tsp. baking powder
3/4 tsp. kosher salt
1/4 tsp. baking soda
4 oz. (8 Tbs.) very cold unsalted butter
3/4 cup very cold buttermilk
2 cups grated habanero Cheddar, (or a Gruyère, Gouda, or provolone)

Heat the oven to 500°F (that’s not a typo, just make sure your oven is immaculately clean) and position a rack in the middle of the oven. If your oven is not very clean, pre-heat to 450°F. Line a rimmed baking sheet with parchment.

By hand: Put the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and baking soda in a large mixing bowl and stir with a whisk to distribute the ingredients evenly.

With a sharp knife, cut the cold butter crosswise into 1/4-inch-thick slices. Stack 3 or 4 slices and cut them into three even strips. Rotate the stack a quarter turn and cut the strips in half. You should create 6 small bits of butter per slice. Toss the butter bits into the bowl with the flour mixture. Continue cutting all the butter in the same manner and adding it to the flour mixture.

When all the butter is in the bowl with the flour, use your fingers to separate the butter bits (they tend to stick to each other), coat all the butter pieces with flour, and evenly distribute them throughout the flour mixture. Don’t rub the butter too hard with your fingertips or palms, as this will melt the butter. You’re just trying to break the butter pieces apart, not blend the butter into the flour.

When all the butter is evenly distributed, add the cold buttermilk and stir with a large spoon until all or most of the flour is absorbed by the buttermilk and the dough forms a coarse lump, about 1 minute.

By food processor: put the dry ingredients and the butter in a food processor and pulse it until you have a mixture with butter pieces the size of peas. Turn on the food processor and stream in the buttermilk through the feed tube until the dough forms a course lump. This will happen very quickly, so do not over-process.

Dust a work surface with flour and dump the dough onto the floured surface, cleaning out the bowl with a spatula or a plastic bowl scraper. Dust the top of the dough and your hands with flour, and press the dough into a 3/4-inch-thick rectangle. Sprinkle a small amount of additional flour and one-third of the cheese on the top of the dough. Fold the dough over on itself in three sections, as if folding a letter (also called a tri-fold). With a bench knife or metal spatula, lift the dough off the counter and dust under it with flour to prevent sticking, if necessary. Dust the top with flour and press the dough out again into a 3/4-inch-thick rectangle. Sprinkle on another third of the cheese and repeat the tri-fold. Repeat this procedure one more time (three times in all), using the remaining cheese.

After the third tri-fold, dust under and on top of the dough, if needed, and roll or press the dough into a 1/2-inch-thick oval. At this point, you can simply cut the dough into rectangles to avoid any waste or having to re-roll the dough.

Alternatively, if you’d like round biscuits, dip a 2-inch or 2-3/4-inch round biscuit cutter in flour and start cutting biscuits, dipping the cutter in flour between each biscuit. Press straight down to cut and lift straight up to remove; twisting the biscuit cutter will seal the sides and interfere with rising. Use a bench knife or spatula to transfer the biscuits to the baking sheet, placing them about 1/2 inch apart.

Gently gather any scraps of dough, pat and roll out again, and cut more biscuits from the remaining dough. You can gather and roll the scraps two times total and still get good results (the more times you roll out, the tougher the biscuits will be).

Put the baking sheet in the oven and reduce the temperature to 425°F. If you are baking the biscuits immediately after making them, bake for 8 minutes; rotate the pan 180 degrees; continue baking until both the tops and bottoms of the biscuits are a rich golden brown and the biscuits have doubled in height, revealing flaky layers on the sides, 4 to 6 minutes more. It’s all right if some butter seeps from the biscuits. Remove the pan from the oven and set it on a cooling rack, leaving the biscuits on the pan. Cool the biscuits for at least 3 minutes and serve them hot or warm (they will stay warm for about 20 minutes).

If you are baking frozen biscuits, just put them in the oven for 20 minutes until they are a rich golden brown.