mmmm… biscuits

some of you astute readers may have noticed a distinct lack of reports about the “bread of the month” for the past few months. how observant of you. i have to say that the summer months do not make me want to heat up the kitchen, so…. i didn’t make any bread all summer! (what a shame. pizza dough on the grill is fantastic and maybe i could have discovered a recipe i like better than my beer pizza dough recipe.*)

anyway, the weather is turning chilly and i have discovered a new bread that i need to overcome my reluctance to make: biscuits. i was inspired to try biscuits again while reading through an issue of cook’s illustrated that someone donated to the library’s magazine exchange bin (dangerous thing, free magazines for the taking…) i’d never really read through any before and i found myself completely fascinated by the scientific process these recipe writers go through in pursuit of the perfect end product. they also write in a very drool-inducing manner about the final results, so i had to try a few. so far, i’ve made the “chewy fudgy brownies” (extremely rich, but not too sweet and with that great, shiny, papery thin crust on the top–just like the recipe promised!) and the “quick cream biscuits.” my first attempt at the biscuits was a few weeks ago and it was a disaster! i wanted to try them out, but i don’t keep heavy whipping cream on hand (does anyone these days?!) so i went down to the local convenience store and they had all manner of milk products…. except for heavy whipping cream. so, i bought half-and-half and figured that would do almost as well. wrooong! disaster city! i dumped in the amount of liquid called for, began stirring and very quickly realized that i was not going to have any of the “dry floury bits” left in the bottom of the bowl that the recipe described. it was a soupy mess! i checked the recipe again. had i mis-read the recipe and not added all of the flour called for? was there really this much difference between spooning the flour into the measuring cup vs. scooping flour into the measuring cup? i panicked and dumped more flour in. and more. and more. it started to come together, but it was still so liquid that i knew i wouldn’t be able to cut it with a biscuit cutter (it would just puddle out into…well, not a biscuit). so i added yet more flour. i knew at this point that the recipe would not yield the amazing biscuits described in the magazine, my only hope was that i wouldn’t have to just dump the whole shebang in the garbage. i baked them and while the flavor was ok, they were pretty hard and dry.

tonight, i finally got around to trying the recipe again, this time with heavy whipping cream. them scientific cooking people really know what they’re talking about! what a difference a little fat can make! i did indeed get dry flour bits! the recipe worked beautifully. when i cracked one open straight out of the oven, i even got that tantalizing biscuit steam you only ever see on mcdonald’s breakfast commercials. i have to admit that i ate three. one, just to try, one with my bowl of soup for supper …. and one with grandma c’s black raspberry jam for dessert. oh yeah.

anyone else have a favorite biscuit recipe they’d like to recommend (and no, “crack open the can” is not an instruction i’m interested in following)? I generally prefer roll-and-cut to drop biscuits, but there is a drop biscuit recipe in another c.i. issue that i might have to try out.

if anyone clamors for them, i’ll share the final biscuit and beer pizza dough recipes.

*this would be tricky. i love the ease of the beer pizza dough recipe. the beer acts as both the liquid and the yeast in the dough making it rise immediately, so you don’t even have to wait for it!