Sunday Morning Biscuits

If you work with spreadsheets and text editors and web apps all day, using your hands to make something tangible can help you feel like you’ve actually done something real.  This is my favorite recipe for homemade biscuits… I make them with my daughter on Sunday mornings.  She gets flour all over the kitchen and loves to taste every ingredient by itself. 

Credit:

• Alton Brown, culinary genius

Dry Ingredients:

• 2 C flour
• 4 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp baking soda
• 3/4 tsp salt

Wet Ingredients:

• 2 TBS butter
• 2 TBS shortening
• 1 C buttermilk

Preparation:

• Preheat oven to 450 degrees.
• Line a baking sheet with parchment. (Don’t use the Air Bake pans if you can avoid it — they’re not really designed for quick breads.)
• Combine dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl.
• Rub the butter and shortening into the dry ingredients using just your fingertips. Work until there are no pieces of butter bigger than a pea — the mixture should resemble crumbs (careful not to melt the fats!)
• Pour in the buttermilk. Stir just until the dough comes together; it will be very sticky.
• Turn dough out onto a floured surface. Dust the top with flour and fold the dough over on itself a few times and pat it into a 1 1/4 inch round. Work the dough as little as possible to avoid developing the gluten.
• Cut out biscuits with your favorite biscuit cutter.  The best method is to push straight down hard, then twist a quarter-turn to pull out the biscuit.
• Place biscuits on the baking sheet so that they just touch. Re-work any scrap dough as little as possible.

Cooking:

• Bake until biscuits are tall and golden on top, 15-20 minutes.