Mimsy Were the Borogoves

Food: Recipes, cookbook reviews, food notes, and restaurant reviews. Unless otherwise noted, I have personally tried each recipe that gets its own page, but not necessarily recipes listed as part of a cookbook review.

Half-hour biscuits

Jerry Stratton, June 6, 2006

There’s no reason to settle for lesser prepared biscuits when you can make these in half an hour.

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Servings: 4
Preparation Time: 30 minutes

Ingredients

  • 1 3/4 cups flour
  • 1/4 cup corn meal
  • 3/4 tblsp baking soda
  • 1 tblsp cream of tartar
  • 1 tsp sugar
  • 1 tsp coarse sea salt
  • 5 tblsp chilled, unsalted butter
  • 2/3 cup yogurt

Steps

  1. Mix or sift together the flour, corn meal, baking soda, tartar, sugar, and sea salt.
  2. Add the butter and mix together or cut together until the butter is all no more than pea-sized pieces.
  3. Add the yogurt and mix together until just after it all comes together. Knead 8 times or 8 revolutions.
  4. Roll to about half an inch to an inch thick on a floured surface.
  5. Cut into 2 to 3-inch diameter circles using a biscuit cutter and place circles on cookie sheet.
  6. Let rest in the refrigerator for 15 minutes.
  7. Preheat the oven to 450F.
  8. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes.

This recipe began its life as the southern-style biscuit recipe in the Best of Food & Wine 1993. Over the years I’ve attempted to refine it to better fit my own style of cooking and eating.

As usual when baking with yogurt, you’ll get better results with yogurt that isn’t low-fat. If you can get a “cream-line” style yogurt where the cream floats to the top, use all of the cream here.

If you use baking powder, replace the baking soda and cream of tartar with one tablespoon of baking powder.

If you don’t have any corn meal on hand, increase the flour to two cups and drop the sugar to one teaspoon.

A food processor will make these biscuits even easier to make. You can just add each step to the food processor. At the end, as soon as the dough comes together, let it revolve eight times around the food processor, and then it’s ready to roll out.

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