Well, Butter My Biscuits!

Back in the summer I signed up for several cooking-related meetup groups, one which being What's Cookin' Chicago?, one of largest of its kind. It took me a while, but I went to my first meetup with this group last month, a class about making biscuits. Now, I love me some biscuits. If I’m being honest, I love me some KFC biscuits, but the part of me that believes that anything home-cooked is a million times better—and usually better for you—than anything born from a fast food freezer tries to pretend that isn’t true. But, every time I’ve tried to make biscuits I’ve failed to produce that wonderful, fluffy, buttery, golden goodness that comes from behind that chicken counter.

Unfortunately, the day that I showed up to take my biscuit class, the studio’s oven wasn’t working. This meant that while we would learn about composing the biscuit dough, we wouldn’t actually get to bake it and taste it. To account for this snag, Joelen, the group’s organizer, had baked some beforehand so we would know what the doughs would produce.

I learned two important things at this biscuit class. 1) There are two types of biscuits: fluffy and flaky. 2) I prefer fluffy biscuits. While I did realize that some biscuits have that lovely, all-encompassing, melt in your mouth kind of feel and others do not, I never realized that it was due to two specific baking methods. The main difference is that the fluffy biscuits contain cake flour and are formed by lightly shaping the dough into balls and then pressing down on them to flatten them a little. Flaky biscuits use only all-purpose flour and are rolled out. The dough is then folded in on itself, then rolled again, then folded, then rolled, so you end up with layers of dough with thin sheets of butter in between, much like with puff pastry. (So, I’m told. I’ve never made my own puff pastry.) Both samples of the finished biscuits were good, but I knew immediately that it was the fluffy variety that I had been searching for all along.

Although we didn’t get to bake any biscuits that night, Joelen sent us the recipes she had used so we could try them at home. And try them I did. I decided to make two variations of the fluffy biscuit, the first with nice savory dill, and the second with sharp cheddar and bacon. Because what’s not better with bacon? The basic ingredients were all-purpose flour, the cake flour, baking powder, baking soda, sugar, salt, butter, and buttermilk. You can then change up the biscuits anyway you choose—add some thyme or some green onions or some blue cheese or some crumbled sausage, whatever you like.

 

 

The biscuit method of baking is similar to the pie method of baking wherein you mix your dry ingredients, cut in your cold butter, and then mix in your wet ingredients and any of the special add-ins. I did just that, mixing in my dill and my cheddar and bacon in last. There seemed to be some dry parts of the dough that didn’t mix in well with the addition of the buttermilk and had crumbled at the bottom of the bowl, but I just tried to incorporate them as much as I could. As instructed, I divided the dough into 12 portions and shaped them into balls, pressing down on them lightly when I placed them on the baking sheet. The biscuits got one more brushing of buttermilk before going in the oven.

 And when they came out? Heaven. Beautiful, hot, meltingly good, scrumptious biscuits. I think I used a bit too much dill, because the flavor was slightly over-powering, but other than that both varieties came out amazingly well. I shall never want for tender, fluffy biscuits again. At only $25, the class was well worth it. I definitely plan on taking more.

With dill

With sharp cheddar and bacon