Jan 4

Jan 4 Make me a (Turkey) Sandwich Redux...Rizzo's Biscuits

When Wes was planning his November meal and he decided to make it Thanksgiving themed, it was a given that he was going to ask me to make biscuits. I’ve been on the search for the best biscuits in the world for a while now. Every time I find a recipe (of any kind) that seems interesting to me, I save the webpage. As I was looking for a biscuit recipe to try, I found the following recipe from Alton Brown on the Food Network:

Ingredients:

2 cups flour
4 teaspoons baking powder
¼ teaspoon baking soda
¾ teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons shortening
1 cup buttermilk, chilled

I liked this recipe for a couple of reasons. One, November is not exactly a slow time for me in school. The temperatures are getting cooler, the darkness is becoming more apparent and the kids are getting ramped up for all of the holiday breaks, therefore, I am getting more and more stressed out and busy at work. Due to all of that, I liked that this recipe had very few ingredients and many of them I keep on hand at home. Next, this recipe calls for buttermilk, which I figured would give me that fluffy, biscuity taste that I have been craving for so long! Finally, the directions were so simple, that I could make these biscuits with Cece hanging out at the counter with me!

Special assistant, Cece, at your service.

First, you will get the oven heated to 450 degrees. The directions say to combine the first 4 ingredients in a large mixing bowl, then to use your fingertips to rub the butter and shortening in the dry ingredients until the mixture looks like crumbs. Next, you create a well and pour the buttermilk inside. Stir the mixture until the dough comes together and is very sticky.

Hopefully, you had enough common sense/experience to remember to pre-flour (like that, Wes??) the counter before your hands got all sticky with the dough (unlike me!). Luckily, my little helper had no problem sticking her hand in the flour jar and tossing it on the counter. This was just right up her alley! Once you get the dough on the floured surface, you just need to fold it 5 or 6 times and then press it down to about 1 inch thick.

The final step before popping these guys in the oven is to cut the dough into biscuit shape. I don’t have any biscuit cutters, but that didn’t stop me! I decided to use some creativity and resourcefulness and I just took a glass with a large rim in order to cut my biscuits. At this point, you are just cutting out biscuits and placing them on the baking sheet until you don’t have any more dough. As Wes has mentioned before (I think), I LOVE eating cookie dough. Now, you can add biscuit dough to my list of weird things to eat. It’s not quite as good without the sugar and chance of food poisoning, but I’m not going to pass it up. Cece, on the other hand, was not a fan. The recipe says to bake the biscuits for 15-20 minutes. I did 17 minutes. I would recommend aiming for less time if you like your biscuits on the lighter side, like me.

They turned out pretty well! We ate them throughout the week, instead of right away as they were hot and I imagine they would have been better right out of the oven. I guess I’ll have to try them again on my next snow day!