Kentucky Biscuits

An excellent base recipe for plain biscuits. If you're looking for something cheesy, spicy, or otherwise flavored, you'll have to either use a different recipe or modify this one. (I'm on a crusade to get people to critique a recipe according to its intended purpose!) I made a couple procedural changes that may help with the final product. First, I always find it helpful to sift the dry ingredients three times in order to fully incorporate them, especially the baking powder (one reason some folks may have trouble with "tasting" the baking powder). Secondly, I did take issue with the two minute kneading. Far too long for biscuits... you'll activate the gluten and wind up with a more bread-like texture. The biscuit standard is twelve turns, but you develop a feel for when the dough is holding together, sometimes you'll need a couple more or less. Finally, I roll my dough out into a rectangle and cut it into squares with a knife. This saves time, and eliminates the need to re-roll scraps--which will always be less tender than the first rolled.

The best biscuits!!! I used half whole wheat flour and added 1/4 tsp salt. Let the cut biscuits sit for 10-15 minutes before baking and they will be VERY tall and light!

Wow, this was very good. I never make biscuits because they always seem so dry, not these! One thing I did do was freeze the stick of butter and then grate with a box grater (I saw this on a cooking show). That way the butter stays nice and cold for a nice tender biscuit. Plus it mixes much easier with the dry ingredients. Will definately make this again!