Quick: What shape are biscuits?
You all said round, didn't you? Of course you did! Of course biscuits are round! Everyone knows that!
But why?
(That sound you hear is my brain screeching to a halt in surprise.)
I've been making biscuits for twenty years now, and I just last week had this revelation that they do not have to be cut into rounds. This was a game-changer for me, because one of the most tedious parts of biscuit-making for me is cutting out the biscuits. It takes awhile, and I always have to gather up the un-cut parts and do it at least two more times. It's annoying.
But when I realized that I can just press the dough (I also hate using my rolling pin if I don't have to, and biscuit dough is thick enough I just use my hands) into a sort of rectangular shape and use the knife I cut the butter with to zip up and down and side to side to make rectangular biscuits . .
Well, they're more rectangular-ish on the sides, there.
Biscuits on the pan literally two minutes after dumping the dough out of the bowl.
I don't have a picture of the baked biscuits because they were eaten too fast when they came out of the oven. Because no one cared that they weren't round. No one even noticed.
So go ahead and ditch the biscuit cutter if you want and make any shape that works for you. Be a rebel. It feels good.
P.S. Bonus biscuit tip: If you're feeding a bunch of kids, make lots of smaller biscuits, rather than just a dozen or so big biscuits, so they can go back for seconds and thirds. They always want seconds and thirds of biscuits, and this way you don't have to make a double batch. (Although I think my days of skating by with a single batch are coming to an end. These boys are definitely getting into the eating phase of life. Heaven help me.)
* Second only to the cutting in of the butter, which is also tedious.
Welcome to square-ish buiscuit land. It's a beautiful place.
ReplyDeleteI've been cutting my scones & biscuits in squares since I read that doing so eliminated excess handling. Made sense to me
ReplyDeleteMy grandmother, a cook in a big house, did this as did my Mum and now me. You can do it with scones too.
ReplyDeleteI'm big on making biscuits/cookies small so kids can go back for more. I think it was growing up in a big family - small made things go farther (or at least it seemed). My older kids now bake and make big cookies - the little ones can always tell who was baking just by looking at the size.
ReplyDeleteI just drop my biscuits - lazier still! When my oldest were young I would do shapes (teddy bears and cats and all). Invariably though they'd be tough and cook unevenly. So I go boring now.
Here's another tip to speed things up - use a pizza cutter instead of a knife to cut your dough.
ReplyDeleteLove it!
ReplyDeleteSoon it will be one batch per teenage boy. Time to give them a lesson on Biscuit Making 101.
ReplyDeleteMy great grandmother, born I. 1895, did it this way because there was no waste. In her 70, she graduated to a pizza cutter. She would run it through a butter wrapper when it would start to stick.
ReplyDeleteIf you melt your butter and pour it into the cold milk it turns into little balls and mixes in a lot quicker.
ReplyDeleteJames Beard published a recipe for cream biscuits--using heavy cream for the milk and butter. They are so easy and so good.
ReplyDeleteLisa: Now that is intriguing . . .
ReplyDeleteMiL: Yes, but can I get heavy cream? No. Only a sad imitation. And I have to hoard it for my coffee, so no Beard Biscuits for us. (I remember when A. made them for me, though, and they are good.)
Oh, biscuits may be the food of the gods.
ReplyDeletehttp://owlhaven.net/2012/03/15/really-big-really-delicious-biscuits/
Makes a huge recipe. Can be halved, but why? Just freeze the extras.
Two comments on this. She cuts them into squares as you do (she makes big ones and you make small ones, but tomato-tomato). I just use a large spring-loaded ice cream scoop (a gift from the previous generation) and drop them. I am completely lazy when it comes to rolling stuff out. If it ain't a cinnamon roll, ain't no need.
I know both of us love using the food processor oh-so-much, but if you use Mary's recipe and use the processor to cut all the butter into half the flour, and from there mix that with the rest of the flour blended with the other dry ingredients in a ginormous bowl, and then stir in the rest, it makes it way quicker.
Written out, that looks complicated, but it's not.
Then you can make topping for apple crisp with that no-longer-clean food processor and then whatever else you can think of and everything is awesome. Including the biscuits.
I once made a cardinal sin and told mom that grandma's biscuits were better than hers. 😑
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