Okay, so this isn't a recipe made with the lovely and very fresh local ingredients, but I still think it is worth posting. Sometimes I just get a hankerin' for biscuits. In fact, I think they are one of the few perfect foods. I haven't yet found a restaurant around here that serves real biscuits, so I have to make them myself. A really great biscuit should be a little crunchy on the outside and tender inside. And oh those layers. A biscuit needs to have flaky layers that you can pull off one by one. And I don't believe in adding sugar to my biscuits. A true biscuit should be a versatile bread, equally at home with a touch of butter and honey, or as a side to a hearty bowl of chili
Ingredients:
2 cups all purpose flour1/2 tsp. salt
4 tsp. baking powder*
6 tbsp. shortening**
1 cup milk
Preparation:
Preheat oven to 200°C (400°F).
Combine the flour, baking powder and salt in a bowl. Add the shortening and use your hands (or a pastry blender if you are squeamish) to blend. You should have a mixture that is more coarse than sand, but will still not hold together in larger pieces on its own.
If you want you can make your biscuits up to this point ahead of time. And you can mix the flour and shortening as much as you want. They will not suffer. But once you move on to the next step, you are committed. Adding the milk activates the baking powder, so you have a fairly short window to get your biscuits in the oven if you want them to rise properly. From now on, you also want to handle the dough as little as possible, because the milk also activates the gluten in the flour, and if you handle the dough too much, your biscuits will be tough.
Make a well in the middle of the flour mixture and add milk all at once. Using a fork, gently blend and bring everything together into a dough. Your dough should be slightly sticky.
Turn your dough onto a very floured surface. Pat the dough out into a rough rectangle about 1 1/2 inches thick. Sprinkle the dough liberally with flour, and then fold in half. Press the dough out again. What you are doing here is creating the layers in the dough. Repeat the above process until you have folded the dough 6 times.
When you have finished folding, press the dough out into a rectangle 3/4 inch thick.
Using a biscuit cutter, cut out as many biscuits as you can from the dough. If you don't have a biscuit cutter, you can use a glass, but use the thinnest glass you have. The important thing is to spin the cutter while you are gently pressing through the dough. If you just mash through the dough, you will seal together the edges of the layers you created and your biscuits won't rise as much.
After you make your first pass with the biscuit cutter, you will obviously have some dough left on your board. As gently as you can, press the dough together to make another rectangle and cut out your remaining biscuits. The biscuits from the second pass will not be as tender as the ones from the first pass.
Place your cut biscuits on a baking sheet close together. Not just touching, you want to really cozy them up. This will help your biscuits rise up instead of out.
bake the biscuits until golden brown, about 15 minutes. Serve.
Cook's notes:
*Here in Mazatlan, baking powder goes flat very fast. If your baking powder is more than 4 months old, throw it away and buy new.
**If you like buttery biscuits, you can substitute 3 tbsp butter for 3tbsp of the shortening, but your biscuits won't be as flaky and tender.
Prep time: 20 minutes
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