Buttermilk biscuits

Don't you just love a good biscuit? Doesn't it just make your heart happy?

So, if I'm hearing crickets, it must mean that y'all are Yankees. Because any good Southerner (or half-Southerner, as the case may be) will tell you that biscuits are an essential part of any true cook's recipe collection. You eat them with jam, ham, gravy, strawberries and whipped cream, or just plain butter. Biscuits range from light and airy to crumbly and crispy. The buttermilk biscuits I made to go with the jam I made earlier are definitely of the crumbly and crispy variety. 

Biscuits are also a natural vehicle for gravy, so that post is right after this one. 

They're pretty simple to make, but there are four really important things to keep in mind when you make them yourself: 

1. Make sure the butter and buttermilk in the biscuit dough stays really cold. I stick the butter in the freeze the night before I plan to bake them.
2. Use fresh baking powder or you'll be disappointed when the biscuits don't rise.
3. Handle the dough as little as possible. If you overwork the dough, it'll make for some tough biscuits.
4. Cut the dough using sharp biscuit cutters (or a sharp knife) in one swift motion, or they won't rise. Using something dull to cut the biscuits (like a drinking glass or butter knife) will push the edges of the biscuit down and prevent them from rising.

Those are the rules, y'all. Remember them. To start, I whisked all the dry ingredients together and measured out the buttermilk. To the dry ingredients, I added the butter (which I'd chopped into 12 pieces) and squished the butter into the flour until only pea-sized pieces of butter are in the batter. Then I poured the buttermilk into the dough and stirred it around until it was just absorbed.

I turned it out onto a floured surface and kneaded only a few times before flattening it with a rolling pin. I'm always petrified of handling the dough too much.

Then came the fun part, using my biscuit cutters!

A dozen minutes in the oven and here they are. Pretty as a picture.

Buttery, golden little gems. A lump of jam and you're in heaven. 

Buttermilk biscuits

(makes 16 smallish biscuits)

lightly adapted from Baking: From my home to yours

Ingredients

2 cups all-purpose flour (or use the White Lily stuff that has some added leavening ingredients)
1 (heaping) tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp sugar
3/4 tsp salt
6 tbsp cold butter, cut into several pieces
3/4 cup cold, well-shaken buttermilk

Instructions

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicone mat.

Whisk all the dry ingredients together. Drop the butter in the flour mixture and, using your fingers, mash the butter into the flour until only small pebbles of the butter are remaining. Pour the buttermilk over the mixture and use a fork to gently mix everything together. Knead the dough with your hand only a couple of times before turning it out onto a floured work surface (I usually just get a handful of flour and spread it around my really large cutting board).

Sprinkle a tablespoon or two of flour over the dough. Using a rolling pin or your hands, pat the dough out so that it's about half an inch thick. Don't fuss too much with the dough, if it's thicker than that or a little thinner, that's fine. You don't want to handle the dough too much!

Cut out biscuits using your metal biscuit cutter or a sharp knife, cutting out as many biscuits as you can during the first try, because the biscuits you make from the scraps that have been rolled out together will not be as tender. Still tasty, but not the same. (I froze half the biscuits I made at this point, first on a plate in a single layer so they wouldn't stick together and then in a plastic freezer bag to save space.)

Place the biscuits on the lined baking sheet. If you want crispy, crusty biscuits like the ones in my pictures above, place them a couple inches apart from each other so they don't touch when they cook. If you want softer biscuits that you tear away from other biscuits, make the biscuits touch one another.

Bake in the oven for 13-16 minutes, until the biscuits are golden brown. Hopefully, because you've been as paranoid as me about handling your dough too much, the biscuits will have puffed up too.

Serve hot with honey, butter, jam, or gravy. I'm sure other things work, but these are my favorite!