Have I told you guys and gals that I want to open a biscuit restaurant in Maine–a place where I can serve big, fat old fashioned biscuits stuffed with all sorts of good things: Pimento cheese, crispy bacon or a local sausage patty, a farm-fresh egg, and something green and bitter to name a few.
For years, I’ve been dreaming of opening this little hole-in-the-wall place. I have the majority of my limited menu planned.
An aside: all of this has been dreamed up on long runs or bike rides. Truth be told, I’m not a huge fan of cardio but love food, so I think about food 99% of the time I’m working out. Naturally, my default “carrot” may or may not be biscuits. And I have the near-perfect biscuit recipe, which I’m sharing with you here.
Another aside: I have every intention to write a longer, more focused post all about biscuits (and their various shapes, sizes, and ingredients) but today is not the day.
The recipe below is a variation of one found in Big Food, Big Love (a fabulous cookbook, by the way). Instead of traditional buttermilk, I use whole milk, organic yogurt in my biscuit batter and have had nothing but perfect results. If you’ve visited me before, you know how I feel about those buying huge containers of spoilables when you only need a tad. Though I’m not a buttermilk consumer on the reg, I do have plain, whole milk yogurt in my fridge all the time.
Mix a little buttermilk and a little flour until it feels right, and ask the Good Lord to bless it.” Gail Jefferson from Acre Station Meat Farm in Pinetown, NC (one of my favorite places to grab a biscuit when I’m home).
As you scroll, you’ll probably wonder why there’s sausage in some of the pictures. Well, I had some ground pork I needed to use, so I mixed in a couple minced garlic cloves, a palmful each of finely chopped sage and rosemary, a palmful of red pepper flakes, and a half palmful of salt. Then, I let it sit overnight and formed the meat into patties, fried them in a cast iron skillet, and stuffed it in these decadent biscuits and called it breakfast.
The Cast: Old Fashioned Biscuits
A perfect blend of cake and all purpose flours
An indulgent amount of butter
Tangy, plain whole milk yogurt
Salty, meaty sausage patties (optional)
- 1½ + 2 Tbsp. cups all-purpose flour
- 1½ + 2 Tbsp. cake flour* See headnote
- Heaping 1 Tbsp. sugar
- 1 Tbsp. plus 1 tsp. baking powder
- ½ Tbsp. kosher salt
- 1 scant tsp. baking soda
- ¾ cups (or 1½ sticks) unsalted butter, diced and chilled, plus 1 Tbsp. unsalted butter, melted
- 1½ cups plain whole milk yogurt (not greek yogurt), chilled
- Preheat oven to 450 degrees.
- In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, combine flours, sugar, baking powder, salt, and baking soda on low speed. Once dry ingredients are incorporated, increase speed to medium-low and mix in chilled butter until the butter is incorporated and roughly the size of small peas. Continuing to run the mixer, add yogurt, mixing until just blended. The dough will be rough (not a smooth ball) with some flour resting at the bottom of the bowl.
- Turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface. Using a floured rolling pin, gently roll dough into a 1½ inch thick circle. With a 3 inch cutter, cut out 12 biscuits, dipping cutter in flour between biscuits. Note: If you take anything away from this recipe, take this tip with you: Do not twist the cutter as you're cutting the biscuits. Twisting will seal the sides and prevent them from rising in tall, luxurious layers.
- Arrange biscuits on two prepared baking sheets and brush each biscuit with melted butter. Right before baking, reduce oven to 425°. Bake biscuits until golden brown, 22 to 25 minutes, rotating sheets halfway through.
Encore
My favorite biscuit in all the land (a hometown favorite–recipe originally published in the News and Observer)
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