If you've ever made biscuits, scones, or pie crust dough from scratch, you've probably seen the baking instruction: "Cut in the butter." (Unless you make oil pie crusts, in which case...well...just keep reading.) In baking terms, this means to take small chunks of cold culinary fat (i.e. butter, shortening or lard) and using some method of force to reduce it to teeny tiny bits thoroughly combined with your flour mixture. The fat then melts during the baking process, creating that flaky texture we all love. Some people cut in the butter with their fingers. Other people use two knives (a tactic I have never attempted), or a pastry cutter (a fascinating looking device), or a food processor. When I got married, one of my wedding gifts was a food processor, and upon receiving this excellent gizmo I began using it to cut the fat into all my pastries.
Until Alton Brown set me straight.
Not in person. If I ever met Alton Brown in person I would either flip out into permanent Squee-mode or enter the next level of culinary nirvana, from which I'm pretty certain I would be unable to type. The same goes for Dorie Greenspan, my other distant food sensei. You will hear these two names - plus Julia Child - mentioned a lot in my food-related entries. After my family, these geniuses have helped my kitchen prowess develop the most.
But back to the butter! In another highly instructive episode of "Good Eats" (don't ask me which one, they all blur together into an amusing-yet-instructive mental mishmash) A.B. explained that cutting in fat wasn't just about reducing its size, but also about coating the little fat particles with flour, so that the flour better absorbs the oils. Then Dorie Greenspan explained in her brilliant cookbook Baking (freaking love that title, incidentally) that having uniform size pieces of fat would decrease the flaky quality--it's better to have several sizes, ranging from kosher-salt-size to small-pea-size. And this is essentially impossible to achieve with a food processor.
Thus enlightened, I now always ensure my fats are thoroughly chilled, that I have rinsed my own fingers with cold water and quickly dried them (helps prevent my hands from melting the butter), and that I pinch-and-squish (another way of describing "cutting in") the fats quickly until they are of varying size. I can honestly say this has made a notable improvement to my already pretty darn tasty baked goods. So I encourage you to try this at home, and offer the following recipe as practice (we'll do pie crust another day--I'm looking at YOU, oil-crusters!).
Z.D.'s Herbed Buttermilk Biscuits
1 & 3/4 Cup all-purpose flour
1/3 Cup cake flour + more for dusting (yes, you really need this--trust me!)
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 Tablespoon baking powder
2 t sugar (you can round up to 1 T if you want, but I like these a bit more savory)
1/4 t kosher salt, generous
1 oz frozen shortening (about 2 T--I just always keep a jar of 1 T blobs of shortening in my freezer)
4 Tablespoons cold sweet cream (salted) butter, cut into small pieces
2 teaspoons (or more) finely chopped fresh herbs
3/4 Cup cold buttermilk (or 1 T white vinegar + 3/4 C whole milk, rest for 5 min)
- Pre-heat your oven to 425 degrees, and line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicone baking mat (I love me my Silpat!).
- Whisk together the dry ingredients in a medium sized bowl. Add the shortening and the butter, and cut in until pebbly (biggest pieces like a small pea, smallest like kosher salt). Now, why am I using salted butter, you ask? Because if you're like me, you've noticed that EVERY baking recipe these days call for unsalted butter, but you keep running out, and you have all this salted butter sitting in your fridge that's getting totally neglected and is probably going to start picking up weird aromas here soon because it's not getting used quickly enough! The unsalted butter thing is about allowed more control over the amount of salt in your baking, which is a good thing, but honestly? In something like savory biscuits? A tiny bit more or less isn't going to make a huge difference! So I use salted butter for this recipe and it works out just freaking fine!
- Toss in the chopped herbs. This is a great way to use up leftover herbs sitting in your fridge before they go bad. I like to use rosemary or thyme the best, but anything will work. Also, ramps are EXCELLENT when they're in season, but go ahead and use 2 Tablespoons worth because they're so nummy!
- Drizzle in the cold milk and toss with a fork until just combined. Use the extra cake flour to heavily dust a good dough surface (You know those recipes that say "a lightly floured surface?" They lie.) and turn out the dough. Dust the top lightly with a bit more cake flour, then knead gently about four times. Yes, I know this seems contrary - after all, this is biscuit dough, and the more it's handled the tougher it will be! - but just a few kneads work wonders, so go ahead and give it a try. Then pat out the dough into about a 1/2 to 3/4 inch even thickness, and use a 2 inch biscuit cutter to cut out rounds (press straight down, then gave a small twist before lifting back up). You should get about 8 rounds. Place them on your prepared baking sheet just a hairs-breadth from touching each other (this helps them rise more). Pop 'em in the oven, and bake 14 - 18 minutes, until fawn brown on top and just starting to fill your kitchen with that lovely aroma.
Now, if you don't want to bake these right away, you can wrap the dough rounds tightly in plastic and foil and freeze them up to two months. Just pop 'em still frozen like a biscuit-cicle onto a lined pan and bake for 18-22 minutes instead. Permit me the following suggestion: cut the dough into much smaller biscuit - about one inch across or slightly smaller - and freeze the dough. The next time you're invited to a party and asked to bring an appetizer, bake these just before going so they're fresh and warm, and serve with a lovely soft chevre or other spreadable cheese on the side. People will sigh lusciously as they devour them!
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