biscuit

Operation Biscuit – Week Four

/ sugarsitaspell / 6 Comments

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 One

/ sugarsitaspell / 1 Comment

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.