Biscuits from the clay oven

 
Hi Buckeye Fan

Biscuits are the basic pastry and are very quick and easy once you have made them a few times. I'm sorry I can not find my old recipe, I had to quit making them when I found I was diabetic. :(

HERE is a good looking basic biscuit recipe.

HERE is a good looking Buttermilk Biscuit recipe.

I have not tried either but would if I could.

I would use butter instead of shortening just for the flavor. Many recipes will call for unsalted butter and I ignore that, salted is just fine. Keep butter or shortening cold, you want it to stay in little pieces in the dough, this turns into a flaky biscuit. If you have a food processor you can put as much of the dry ingredients in it that will easily fit with the butter and give it a few pulses till the butter is well cut into the flour, no finer then a course corn meal texture and maybe not even quit that fine. With a food processor you can use frozen or near frozen butter, it will form the little bits better, just cut it into patty sized pieces before adding to the processor. I also got out of the habit of cutting my biscuits into rounds. I feel the extra handling of the dough can hinder their rising as high and the added steps are just not needed. I would dump my dough out on to a floured counter top, dust the top of the dough well with more flour as it is sticky and rough shape it into a thick rectangle or a square and use a knife to cut it into rectangular, square or even diamond shaped biscuits. The biscuits don't care what shape they are but might appreciate less handling. Brings to mind my grandfather that didn't like round cakes so gram always made a square cake, I wonder how he felt about his biscuits? :laugh:

Hot from the oven with plenty of melted butter on top and strawberry jam or a drizzle of honey has got to be one of the original comfort foods. With sausage gravy or as a Strawberry Shortcake and now your talking!

Blair

 

 
Great looking biscuits Clay! I love a good biscuit and those look wonderful. I'm sorry I never got to make them on the egg. Now they are no longer part of my diet I miss a great biscuit and all you can do with them. When I was a kid growing up our church always had an annual fair that was one of the highlights of the summer for our small town and the highlight of the fair was the huge homemade strawberry short cakes made with homemade biscuits, soaking in tons of berries and juice and topped with a mountain of homemade whipped cream. Life at it's best! :laugh:

Blair

 

now my wife would love that...
do you have a good recipe?
yours look awesome!!!

Gator,

Thanks for the help and the recipes. That's what I like about this forum everyone will share information and take the time to help out, can't wait to cook some buttermilk biscuits.

Buckeye Fan

 
My pleasure Buckeye Fan, your right, this forum is like none other that I have seen. Biscuits are one of those traditional foods that just about everybody loves. With a little practice you can get so you can throw together a batch in no time. I found through experimentation that many biscuit recipes can have the amount of leavening (baking powder and/or baking soda) increased, some times as much as 50% if the biscuits are not light enough. I also found out with pie crusts, one of the other very basic pastries, is that if I replaced about one third of the butter with lard I would get a pie crust that would literally melt in your mouth. I don't recall if I ever tried it with biscuits but the two are very, very similar and it may be worth the experiment. Just a few thoughts.

Blair