


I am a fairly good cook and a better baker, so I am embarrassed to admit when I got married at the age of 32, I thought biscuits came from a can, cornbread from a jiffy box and I did not own a cast iron skillet. Despite these deficiencies, my native-Texan Husband married me and I proceeded to perfect biscuits and cornbread. This week was Lindsey Lamarche's turn to bake with Sister Beasley and much to my husband's delight, she asked to learn how to make biscuits. Here is our recipe.
2 C. flour ( half wheat if you like)
2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt
1TBSP sugar (opt)
Pulse above in food processor with 6 TBSP butter, when it resembles coarse cornmeal add 1 C buttermilk and pulse until just combined. Let's talk about buttermilk for a minute. I think it is great in food but I cannot get past the smell to drink it. It is expensive and since I don't bake biscuits alot, it was going bad on me. I ordered some powdered buttermilk from emergency essentials, reconstituted it and baked biscuits and cornbread with it. I have found it works better to add the 2.5 TBSP of powdered buttermilk to the dry stuff and add the 1 cup water at the end and that is what we did. BTW, it also tastes better to drink than regular powdered milkbut it is considerably more expensive than the cannery milk.
Turn out onto heavily floured hands and surface because it will be very wet still. Just gently kneed it around in the flour until the surface of dough is no longer sticky. Transfer to 10 inch cast iron skillet (or greased cake pan if you haven't discovered the beauty of cast iron yet) press evenly into pan and score in wedges(like cutting a pizza) with a well floured edge, I like to use my bench scraper( the white handled thing in Lindsey's hand) but any spatula will work, and bake at 450 degrees for 12-15 minutes. They will break apart at the scored edges so you don't have to roll and cut and take the chance of making your dough tough.
I am going to try this in the cast iron skillet- and of course, wheat free- I bet it makes a wonderful crunchy crust!
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