Saturday, July 24, 2010

Biscuits for Breakfast

The best days start with biscuits hot from the oven. Why more people don't make them, I don't know. A pan of biscuits is ready for the oven before the oven gets hot.

Here's a pan of biscuits ready to bake.



These biscuits are made with canola oil and hand formed. That's why they're so easy to make.

Biscuits

1 cup unbleached flour
1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/3 cup cooking oil (canola, sunflower, even olive oil)
2/3 cup buttermilk.

Pre-heat the oven to 475 degrees.

Put all the dry ingredients in a mixing bowl and whisk them together. Put the oil and buttermilk in a one-cup measure and, without stirring them together, pour the liquid into the dry ingredients. Stir to incorporate the dry ingredients.

Pinch off a biscuit-size piece of dough and, using your fingers, shape it into a disk about 1/2" to 3/4" thick. Place the disk in an ungreased baking pan. Repeat until the dough is gone.

Bake for 15 minutes or so, depending on the size of your biscuits. Bigger ones take longer than little ones.

The original recipe called for rolling and cutting 12 biscuits from this amount of dough. That size is dinky. The rolling and cutting is not needed. Pauline, my sister-in-law, and I reminisced recently about our grandmothers hand forming biscuits. Pauline's grandma rolled the piece of dough between her palms to make a ball that she flattened.



Here they are, ready for butter and strawberry jam. I baked these for 17 minutes.

3 comments:

Jayhawk Fan said...

You really know how to torture a person! My mouth is WATERING!

I made some blueberry scones with yogurt and they were tender, but NOT flaky! I remember watching Mamaw incorporate the wet with the dry with her fingers.

You didn't mention that your strawberry jam is HOMEMADE! Love you!

Blair said...

Shirley, I am not sure if you know this, but Grant and I make these biscuits probably twice a week, on average! We have them to take to work/school/or have slow breakfasts on weekends. Love from Tucson!

Shirley said...

I'm delighted to learn that! So many family members love biscuits. While I was visiting in Maine last week, Zander, who will be four in January, asked, "Did you bring any biscuits?"