The Baking Answer Book (21 page)

1 cup old-fashioned (not quick-cooking) oats

cup sugar

½ teaspoon salt

½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, cut into bits and chilled

¾ cup whole or low-fat milk

1 large egg, lightly beaten

1.
Preheat the oven to 425°F (220°C). Coat a baking sheet with cooking spray or line it with parchment paper.

2.
Combine the flour, oats, sugar, baking powder, and salt in a large mixing bowl. Add the chilled butter and, with an electric mixer on low speed or with your fingers, work the butter into the dry ingredients until the mixture resembles coarse meal. Using a wooden spoon, stir in the milk and egg and mix just until the dry ingredients are moistened. Do not overmix.

3.
Transfer the dough onto a lightly floured work surface and divide it in half. Shape each half into a 6-inch disk. With a sharp chef’s knife, cut each disk into six wedges.

4.
Place the wedges ½ inch apart on the prepared baking sheet. Bake until golden, about 15 minutes. Let cool for 5 minutes and serve warm.

Q
Are scones always cut into triangle shapes?

A
Traditionally, scone dough is patted or rolled into a disk, and then the disk is cut into quarters or sixths, resulting in triangle-shaped pastries. But almost as often in England and throughout the United Kingdom, scone dough is rolled and cut into rounds just like American-style baking-powder biscuits. And there is no law against dropping mounds of scone dough onto a baking sheet for more rusticlooking, irregularly shaped scones.

Q
Why do so many biscuit and scone recipes contain buttermilk?

A
Originally a byproduct of churned butter, today buttermilk is made the way yogurt and sour cream are, by fermenting milk with a bacterial culture. When buttermilk combines with baking soda in a quick bread batter, the result is the creation of many carbon dioxide bubbles, which expand in the oven, giving the bread a particularly light and fine texture. This texture, along with a pleasant tang and welcome moisture, are buttermilk’s gift to quick breads. Regular milk and baking powder may be substituted for buttermilk and baking soda (see
pages 29
and
30
for using baking powder in place of baking soda), but the result won’t have that old-fashioned flavor that comes from buttermilk.

Q
Is “Southern” flour best for biscuits?

A
Southern brands of flour, such as White Lily or Martha White, have a lower protein content than all-purpose flour from national and Northern producers such as Pillsbury, Gold Medal, and King Arthur, and will produce biscuits with a more tender crumb and a moister interior than those baked with all-purpose flour. If these are characteristics that you value in a biscuit, you can either seek out one of these specialty flours (see Resources), or make your own lower-protein flour by substituting cake flour for half of the all-purpose flour in your recipe.

Q
What about fat? Will shortening make flakier biscuits, as with piecrust?

A
Shortening will produce slightly flakier biscuits, because of its leavening power. In addition, biscuits made with shortening will stay fresher longer than those made with butter. But swapping butter for shortening will result in a great loss of flavor, a loss that in my opinion is definitely not worth the small gains of flakiness and shelf life. If you are devoted to designing your own perfect biscuit recipe, it might be fun to play with various combinations of butter and vegetable shortening (25:75; 50:50; 72:25) to see if you agree.

And remember, fat isn’t the only thing that affects flakiness. Technique plays a large role in turning out flaky biscuits
and scones. For super-flaky biscuits and scones, try folding the dough as you would a sheet of puff pastry. Gently roll it out to a thickness of
inch, fold it in half, and gently roll it out again. The layers you’ve folded in will result in flaky layers inside your biscuits.

Q
Why is it so important to use cold butter when making biscuits and scones?

A
The idea is to keep the butter from melting as you put together your biscuit or scone dough, so that it melts inside the oven, leaving the steam pockets and layers that characterize good biscuits and scones. With this in mind, it’s a good idea to keep all of your ingredients cold, which will help keep the butter cold. Not only should you freeze your butter before you begin — it should be so cold that it chips when you cut it into pieces — but your milk or buttermilk should be icy cold, too. Don’t stop there: Why not put your mixing bowl into the freezer for 10 minutes as extra insurance against melting? Attention to these details will pay off in superior biscuits and scones.

Q
What is the difference between using milk, buttermilk, and cream in biscuit dough? Is one better than the others?

A
Biscuits made with baking powder and milk are wholesome, delicious, and above all convenient, since most people will have on hand the ingredients — flour, milk, baking powder, salt, and a little bit of sugar — every day of the week. Many bakers prefer buttermilk for the slightly tangy flavor it gives to biscuits, but also because the acid in buttermilk reacts explosively with the chemical leaveners, giving these biscuits the highest rise. In recipes for cream biscuits, cream stands in for both milk or buttermilk and butter, eliminating the need for cutting the butter into the flour. The resulting biscuits are fluffy and tender, but without the characteristic flakiness of either baking powder or buttermilk biscuits.

MAKE YOUR OWN BUTTERMILK

Most quick bread, biscuit, and scone recipes don’t call for more than 1 cup of buttermilk. If you use buttermilk infrequently, you might want to skip buying it a quart at a time and then throwing out the leftovers. Instead, replace the buttermilk with soured milk made by adding 1 tablespoon of white vinegar or lemon juice to 1 cup of whole milk and letting it stand for 5 minutes.

Dried buttermilk powder is also available and can be used in place of fresh buttermilk as a baking ingredient.

Q
Is it better to mix biscuit and scone dough by hand or with an electric mixer? What about biscuit dough made in a food processor?

A
Although bakers will argue endlessly about the best mixing method for biscuit and scone dough, there are two things they agree on: The proper distribution of fat during mixing; and the quick and careful addition of liquid ingredients are the keys to great biscuits.

Older recipes direct bakers to “rub” chilled butter into the dry ingredients until the mixture resembles coarse meal with some larger crumbs. When the large and small pieces of butter melt in the hot oven, space is freed up for expanding gases, which help the biscuits rise. It is imperative that the butter remain cool. If it melts before it reaches the oven, its purpose as leavening aid is defeated. People with quick and cool hands like to rub the butter into the dry ingredients with their fingertips. Others (myself included) use the paddle attachment of the electric mixer, because warm hands can melt butter before it is properly incorporated. Still others believe that a few pulses in the food processor is the most surefire method.

As for adding the liquid, a few stirs by hand with a wooden spoon is all it should take to incorporate it into the flour and butter mixture. If you are already using an electric mixer, add the liquid and mix on the lowest speed until the mixture just comes together. Adding the liquid ingredients to the food processor will almost certainly lead to overmixing, so if you want to use the food processor to cut the butter into the flour, transfer this mixture to a mixing bowl before mixing in the liquid by hand.

Q
What are the differences between dropped biscuits and rolled biscuits?

A
The most obvious difference is that dropped biscuits are easier to make. Instead of rolling out and cutting the dough, you simply drop spoonfuls directly onto a baking sheet. The dough for dropped biscuits usually contains more liquid, which makes for a very moist and tender interior. Rolled biscuits, in contrast, have a flaky, almost layered texture, which they get from light kneading and gentle rolling (it is important not to overdo it at either of these stages). When you knead and then roll out the dough, you flatten little pieces of butter into flakes, which then melt in the oven, leaving air pockets that fill with steam.

Q
What is the best way to roll and cut biscuit dough?

A
Overworking the dough will develop gluten in the flour and result in tough biscuits. So, as when mixing, be as gentle as possible when rolling and cutting. In fact, it’s best to use the rolling pin as little as possible in getting your dough from the mixing bowl to the oven. Turn out your
dough onto a lightly floured surface and very gently pat it into a ¾-inch-thick disk. Lightly roll over the dough with a floured rolling pin to even out the surface. Then use a biscuit cutter to get as many biscuits out of the disk as possible. After transferring your biscuits to a greased or parchmentlined baking sheet, don’t reroll the dough. Gently push the scraps together to form a new disk, and cut with a biscuit cutter again. This second batch may not be as perfectly smooth on top as the first batch, but will have the same tenderness from your gentle handling.

SEE ALSO:
How flour helps baked goods rise,
page 90
.

Q
Why do biscuits and scones need to be baked at such a high temperature?

A
At temperatures of 425°F (220°C) and above, butter melts quickly and produces steam, which lifts biscuits and scones to lofty heights. At a lower temperature, say 350°F (180°C), you’d get a less dramatic rise and a heavier product. Another benefit to high-heat baking: There is less time for moisture to evaporate, so your biscuits and scones won’t dry out as they bake through. I bake my biscuits in a 500°F (260°C) oven to reap the full benefits of high heat, but take care with my scones, which have quite a bit of added sugar. At temperatures above 425°F (220°C) the sugar in the scones may burn, leaving you with blackened rather than beautifully golden pastries.

Q
My scones and biscuits don’t seem to rise as high as they should, even though I’m using the right amounts of ingredients, making sure my butter is chilled, mixing with a light hand, and baking in a very hot oven. Any idea what I’m doing wrong?