baking triumph! this weekend i made strawberry shortcake to share at my CSA’s potluck meal (post to come). the strawberries were a dream; picked right out of the field, served still sun-warm. there was no need to sugar them in the least. we just sliced, mashed, and poured on top of the shortcakes i had made earlier in the day. we topped with whipped cream (from a can, shameful i know, but we were camping-cooking, which is the one time that one is allowed to cut such corners), and it was an instant success. our only mistake was in not making a triple batch. but honestly, cardboard topped with those strawberries would have been delicious. as i ate my portion, i started to realize that the shortcake was totally inferior. even soaked in mashed strawberries, my plastic spoon barely could cut through the dense, dry, tough-bottomed cake. what went wrong?
making biscuits was one of the first things i learned to cook. i could make them by the time i was 12. mix milk and bisquick (ah bisquick, a baking secret weapon i have worked long and hard to liberate myself from) into a sticky dough. flour a dish towel, drop the dough onto it, roll out into 3/4″ thickness, and use a drinking glass to cut rounds. re-roll the scraps to eliminate waste. plop onto a cookie sheet and put into a hot oven for 10 minutes. done! top with honey and butter and serve with soup on a cold night.
i have long since banned the hydrogenated-oil laden bisquick from my kitchen, so to make this week’s shortcakes, i cracked open the Joy of Cooking, my basic go-to reference, to the section on biscuits. (since shortcake is really just a sweetened biscuit). besides using flour and shortening, the recipe was pretty much the same as what we used to make when i was a kid. they looked the same: 2″ rounds and about 3/4″ thick. that’s 3/4″ thick before and after they baked. they came out with a sweet, bread-y flavor but dry and dense and low. and now that i think about it, the bisquick ones of my childhood were similarly dense, and dry if you didn’t cover them up with more butter when it was time to eat them. aren’t i missing something if i have to coat my baked good in more butter to make it moist enough to eat? these weren’t cutting it. when i picture strawberry shortcake in my mind, i think of a thick, fluffy soft white flour biscuit, getting soggy with strawberries as you eat it. nothing that needs a knife to cut it, for goodness sake.
so when we got back from the farm today i sat down with my copy of The Science of Good Food to learn just what makes biscuits flaky and light. baking is a complicated science, and i won’t attempt to recount much of it here other than: reactions between acids and bases are part of what causes the leavening action. which is why the addition of acidic ingredients (like buttermilk), and why the use of both baking powder (base and acid both) AND baking soda (just a base).
after this basic background i dove into the internets to see what they had to teach me. this was a helpful guide, much of it i already knew (keep your fats cold, don’t overwork the dough), but other things, like the ratio of fat-to-flour was a new one. and i’ve been learning about different kinds of flour lately (cake, pastry, all-purpose, bread, plus the whole wheat versions of all of those). umm, there are six kinds of (wheat-based) flour in my baking cupboard right now. (yes, i have a baking cupboard). it seemed like the Joy of Cooking recipe was short on fat, and that the rolling method just worked the dough way too much, which creates gluten and toughens up the dough. and the additional acid in buttermilk helps limit gluten formation as well as substituting in some lower protein (cake or pastry) flours.
so i headed out to the grocery for half and half, buttermilk, and just to be sure, replaced my baking soda and powder, since i’m not sure how old they are and they lose their reactivity after a while. making this many changes, of course, destroys the scientific method, but really, how many batches of mediocre biscuits did i really want to make?
then, because i can’t leave well enough alone, i started adapting. this recipe is based on this biscuit recipe, but i opted for lower fat buttermilk and switched the cream out for half-and-half with no ill effects, and i increased the sugar to get a sweeter dough. also, i like it when you have to tear the biscuits apart, so i nestled them all together.
* 1-1/4 cups all purpose flour
* 1/2 cup pastry flour
* 1-1/2 tsp. baking powder
* 1/2 tsp. baking soda
* 1/2 tsp. salt
* 2 tsp. sugar
* 1/3 cup cold butter, cut into small pieces
* 2/3 cup cold low-fat buttermilk
* 1/2 cup cold half and half
* 1 cup all purpose flour for shaping biscuits
* 2 Tbsp. melted butter or milk1) mix dry ingredients
2) cut the butter into chunks, keeping it very cold
3) use a pastry cutter or food processor to cut the butter in, leaving some visible chunks about 1/2 the size of a marble.
4) make a well in the center of the dough, and pour in the milks
5) stir gently only until just combined.
6) let dough sit for five minutes
7) pour the 1 cup flour into a plate or wide-mouthed bowl
8) flour your hands and scoop the dough out in scant 1/4 cup balls. it will be very sticky.
9) drop each ball into the flour dish, coat lightly, then gently shape into a ball. work the dough as little as possible!
10) place the dough balls in a greased baking dish, nestling them up against one another
11) brush the tops with milk or melted butter
12) bake at 450 for 15-18 minutes, till nicely browned
13) allow to cook 3-5 min in the baking dish, then transfer to a wire rack
the results? success! these were light, fluffy, stood up tall, and began to soak up berry juice in a delicious way when covered with mashed strawberries. definitely didn’t need additional butter.
some ideas — you could cut the sugar back if you wanted to make a savory biscuit rather than a shortcake. or, sticking with the sweet approach, Teresa suggested adding some turbino sugar to the top that would caramelize and crunch, which i bet would be awesome. next time i’m going to attempt it with wheat pastry flour and see where that gets us.