OPERATION BISCUIT

Operation Biscuit – Week Four

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I’ve fallen behind in my pursuit of the perfect biscuit recipe. McB was sick and it felt wrong to subject him to biscuit experimentation during his illness.

Pretty tops and bottomsThis morning, I got us back on track with Plain Chicken’s 7Up Biscuits. Even before I tasted these little bits of heaven, I loved that these biscuits take so few ingredients – just Bisquick, 7Up, sour cream, and butter. The flavor is amazing and the biscuits are so tender and moist. These are definitely the best biscuits that have ever come out of my kitchen.

Of course it can’t all be rosy, the actual preparation is just a bit tricky because the dough is so soft/moist. I had to add about 1/4 cup of Bisquick so I could make it stiff enough to pat out and then cut the biscuits. I had to use a spatula to lift the biscuits from my board and into the pan because they fell apart when I tried to use my hand. All the little headaches of dealing with this dough are worth it because moist dough makes for melt-in-your-mouth biscuits.

Now for the other cloud in this otherwise sunny experiment, McB said that the biscuits were “very good” and then added “for biscuits.”  He went on to say that he would have preferred a piece of toast. Who in their right mind would want a dry piece of toast instead of this moist, buttery biscuit? Only my sweet husband.

So the search continues…

Operation Biscuit – Week Three

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McB’s common complaint about biscuits is that they are too “bready.” I began to think if I could solve this problem, I might find a biscuit he will eat. Since I can’t change the composition of a biscuit, which is essentially bread, I decided to bust out a flavored biscuit recipe. My friend sent me a link to these cheddar garlic biscuits. I mixed things up and made these for breakfast last week.

McB said that he liked the fact that the biscuits had a flavor other than bread and butter. I was torn because I had some positive feedback for the first time in this experiment but since “bread” and “butter” are two flavors that I enjoy, it was also a little hard to hear. He went on to say that the garlic was a little overpowering. I wonder if he would feel that way if I had prepared the biscuits at dinner instead of breakfast.

I am now looking for herbed biscuit recipes though I plan to tackle Plain Chicken’s 7up Biscuits next, so more “bread” and “butter” for him and more heaven for me.

Operation Biscuit – Week Two

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For anyone who might be new to the blog, I’m trying in vain to find a biscuit recipe that my husband likes. He thinks biscuits are hot, bread-flavored hockey pucks and I’m determined to find the magic recipe that will change his mind.

As I mentioned in the first OPERATION BISCUIT post, McB prefers canned cinnamon rolls to homemade ones or even Cinnabon-made ones. I feared that the same might be true for biscuits so before going any further with homemade recipes, I decided to take a step back and buy canned biscuits.

canned biscuit

For my testing purposes, we had the Great Value version of butter-flavored, flaky Grands.

McB found them to be “bready.” I don’t really understand this critique. As I asked him, it is bread, so is that good or bad? Beefy cheeseburgers are good but I have come to understand that a bready biscuit is not.

I thought the canned biscuit was OK but as the day progressed, it began to sit like a little lead ball in my stomach.

I don’t think we’ll repeat this again.

 

Operation Biscuit – Week One

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My husband loves breakfast but he just doesn’t like biscuits. My theory is that during his childhood in Brooklyn or late teen years in Ohio, he encountered some truly awful, dry bread object masquerading as a biscuit that ruined his appetite for them. This is the only explanation that could make sense to someone who has tasted the warm, fluffy heaven that is a good biscuit.

It was easy to overlook his disdain for biscuits when we lived in Ohio. I’m not a fan of biscuits from either Bob Evans or Cracker Barrel and those were considered the cream of the crop there. At the time, I didn’t have the desire to try to perfect my own biscuit making skills.

Now that we’re in the South, I feel it’s time to hone my own biscuit making skills. I come from good cooking stock and my Granny made wonderful cathead biscuits, even if they did end up burnt now and again. There are hundreds of biscuit recipes out there, I’m bound to find something that I can make and that he will like, right? In that hope, we began OPERATION BISCUIT this morning.

Operation Biscuit week 1Our first recipe was the very basic one found on the box of Heart-Smart Bisquick.

Ingredients
1.5 cups Bisquick Heart Smart Mix
.5 cup skim milk

Instructions
1. Heat oven to 450
2. Mix ingredients until soft dough forms
3.  Knead 10 times, transfer to a surface coated with dry Bisquick
4.  Roll dough to about .5” thick, cut with a round cutter (makes five biscuits using a 2.5” round cutter)
5.         Bake on a cookie sheet for 7-9 minutes

We ended up with five nice sized biscuits.

Mr. McB’s verdict? He thought his buttered biscuit was heavy (later revised to dense) and dry.

 

I found the biscuits to be pretty light and not at all what I would consider dense. They weren’t buttered in any way on the outside but I found my biscuit (pictured here with red currant jelly) to be pretty moist and flavorful. They weren’t the best biscuits I’d ever had but they were sturdy and tasty.

I can tell it is going to be an uphill battle if he’s already throwing out so many bad adjectives to describe these perfectly passable biscuits.

My plan was to continue with Plain Chicken’s 7Up Biscuits next but I think we need to add in a “control” for this experiment by way of a can of biscuits from the refrigerator section of the supermarket. You can roll your eyes, but my husband actually prefers Pillsbury’s canned cinnamon rolls to any rolls I’ve ever made from scratch. Heck, he prefers them to Cinnabon. Given this information, I feel we need to make an effort to rule out a fondness for refrigerated biscuits before moving forward.

If you have a biscuit recipe that you’d like to see added to Operation Biscuit please share it. My goal is to try one new biscuit recipe each week until I’m successful or McB wears down my will to continue.