All-purpose biscuits
All American: Homemade biscuits are what take us into the kitchen today to cook: fat, flaky mounds of quick bread, golden brown, with a significant crumb. Composed of flour, baking powder, fat and a liquid, then baked in a hot oven, they are an excellent sop for syrup, molasses or honey. They are marvellous layered with country ham or smothered in white sausage gravy, with eggs, with grits.
General
Source: NYT
Time: 1 hour
Ingredients
- 2cups all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting
- 2tablespoons baking powder
- 1scant tablespoon sugar
- 1teaspoon salt
- 5tablespoons cold, unsalted butter, preferably European style
- 1cup whole milk
Procedure
- Preheat oven to 425. Sift flour, baking powder, sugar and salt into a large mixing bowl. Transfer to a food processor. Cut butter into pats and add to flour, then pulse 5 or 6 times until the mixture resembles rough crumbs. (Alternatively, cut butter into flour in the mixing bowl using a fork or a pastry cutter.) Return dough to bowl, add milk and stir with a fork until it forms a rough ball.
- Turn the dough out onto a well-floured surface and pat it down into a rough rectangle, about an inch thick. Fold it over and gently pat it down again. Repeat two more times. Cover the dough loosely with a kitchen towel and allow it to rest for 30 minutes.
- Gently pat out the dough some more, so that the rectangle is roughly 10 inches by 6 inches. Cut dough into biscuits using a floured biscuit cutter (or even a glass, though its duller edge may result in slightly less tall biscuits). Do not twist cutter when cutting; this crimps the edges of the biscuit and impedes its rise.
- Place biscuits on a cookie sheet and bake until golden brown, approximately 10 to 15 minutes.