30 April 08 re: a biscuit-making adventure

m-c:

Remember my friend Tess?

mb:

Is she the one who doesn't cook? The one with the frozen pies?

m-c:

No, that's Trudy. Tess is the one who really doesn't cook. Ever. At all.

mb:

Not a likely subject for alteRecipes, I'd guess.

m-c:

Ordinarily, yes, but earlier this year I went to stay with her for a week and she decided she wanted to learn how to make biscuits.

mb:

Not a bad place to start. You had me making biscuits when I was, what, seven years old?

m-c:

That's what I thought. I wondered how she had come upon such an apt inauguration, but I didn't want to make her self-conscious about it.

My first task was to make a list of all the equipment she would need. I decided she'd have something we could use as a mixing bowl and something we could use as a surface for rolling the rough out, but other than those two things I was counting on nothing. Zilch.

I went to Bed Bath & Beyond and got: a rolling pin, a knife sharpener, a pastry blender, a set of measuring spoons, an oven thermometer, pancake turners, a silicone pastry brush, measuring cups, potholders, biscuit cutters, on and on and on. It's my favorite hostess present that I've ever brought her, but I wonder now where she's storing it all.

mb:

Did you forget anything?

m-c:

I didn't forget, but I was mistaken about the surface for rolling the biscuits out. We went so far as to sprinkle a little flour on her rosewood dining table, and then we lost our nerve and borrowed a cutting board from one of her neighbors.

The cutting board was the source of one of our better discoveries, actually. It was so small that ordinarily we would have had to roll the dough out in two batches. Instead, we decided to make it the biscuits extra-thick, and I'll never go back to making short ones again.

mb:

Oooh, that sounds good. I'll have to try.

What recipe did you use?

m-c:

As luck would have it, I was just getting acquainted with the book we later chose as our cookbook of the month for May, Alice Waters's The Art of Simple Food. Alice has a scrumptious biscuit recipe on page 275, and I thought her soothing, assured tone would have a good effect on Tess, who usually gets rattled in the kitchen.

mb:

What was your teaching strategy?

m-c:

Pretty straightforward, just make the biscuits over and over every day for a week. The same as I do with myself when I'm trying to learn something new.

mb:

So the first day you kind of made them for her, and then every day she did more and more?

m-c:

No, the first day she made them from scratch all by herself. I watched her following Alice's recipe, talked her through things she didn't understand, and took notes, which I promised her I'd put up on the website so she can have them forever.

It's always humbling to watch somebody else try to follow a recipe. There are so many things you would never think to write down, like "Add a teaspoon of salt to the bowl by carrying the salt container to the bowl and then measuring out a teaspoon, not by trying to walk across the kitchen carrying a teaspoon of salt."

mb:

I know exactly what you mean. Before we started writing recipes every week, I would look at somebody else's recipe and think what a breeze, I could do that. It's not easy to take somebody from not-knowing to knowing.

Lay out your notes, why don't you.

m-c:

OK, step 1. Stir together in a large bowl the flour and salt. (This is where not to carry the teaspoon of salt across the kitchen.) Knock the bowl on the counter so the flour doesn't cling up the sides.

Step 2. Approximate the butter, three-quarters of a stick but it doesn't need to be exact, exact. Don't put the butter paper into the bowl.

mb:

You remembered to warn her that the butter has to be cold?

m-c:

She liked that because she didn't have to remember to take it out of the refrigerator.

I taught her my standard method for cutting the butter into the dry ingredients.

mb:

I almost never do that any more. I just use my Cuisinart.

m-c:

Me too, but I thought it was going a little far to buy her a Cuisinart at Bed Bath & Beyond.

mb:

Granted.

m-c:

OK, now we're on step ... my notes say we're still on step 2. Finish up cutting the butter into the dry ingredients by putting the knife and the pastry blender into the sink.

Step 3. Mix in the cream. Now don't work the dough any more than absolutely necessary. A fork helps.

One of the days she got some amazing cream. It was so high in butterfat it was semi-solid.

mb:

Was that good or was it a problem?

m-c:

Seemed to me that it worked fine. One day she got confused and used a stick and a quarter of butter instead of three-quarters of a stick, and that day we thought the biscuits were a little too, too ... They were kind of gross. More like eating straight pie dough with no filling. But the semi-solid cream worked great, and inspired me to make my sour cream variation.

The one thing we forgot almost every day was setting aside one Tablespoon of the cream to brush on the top of the biscuits. I think she may have remembered it one day toward the end of the week, but most days absent‑mindedness won out.

We should have rewritten the recipe to make the one Tablespoon stand out more.

Now, step ... my notes say step 4, but step 4 is like 22 steps. Get out your board, flour it, get out your plastic or waxed paper, people with cold hands make good pastry cooks, sign of thyroid dysfunction, work quickly, baking powder starts to work when liquid goes in, press, sparkling water is OK, ...

OK, let me break this down.

Step 4. Add the cream and use a fork to stir the cream into the dough just until the dough comes together, i.e. it can be pressed into a ball in the bowl and the ball can pick up any crumbs in the bowl that you roll it over.

If it's not coming together, add just enough cold water to make it stick together when pressed, but no more than that.

Step 5. Check the oven temperature. Adjust as necessary. We started the week at 400° but later concluded that 375° was better. Tess has a convection oven, and they typically cook hotter than still ovens.

Step 6. Flour your board, put the ball of dough onto the floured board, roll it out into a disk. Never roll all the way to the edge. Roll, turn, roll, turn.

Step 7. Cut out the biscuits. Tess decided she liked the little wing shapes that form among the cut-out biscuits, so we baked those too. We decided we were crazy about thick biscuits. It's OK for the shapes to be close to each other on the baking sheet because biscuits don't spread, but they shouldn't touch one another or the touching parts might not bake fully.

Step 8. Into the oven. She resisted the idea that we were going to cook the biscuits till they were done, testing by how they looked and how they felt, but then she got into it. Once we got the oven temp down to 375°, Alice's estimate of 17 minutes was spot on.

mb:

That sounds like a really nice week. Has she been making the biscuits regularly now that you've left?

m-c:

I'm afraid to ask.

Questions? Comments? Corrections?
Suggestions? Contributions?
Please let us know!