CREAM BISCUITS
OUR BUTTERMILK BISCUITS are easy to prepare: You can have biscuits on the table in 20 minutes. But many cooks are intimidated by this kind of biscuit because they are not comfortable with the traditional process of cutting butter into flour.
We wondered if we could come up with a great recipe for homemade biscuits that can be made quickly and easily and that does not require cutting fat into flour. In short, was it possible to take the guesswork out of making biscuits to create a foolproof recipe?
We began with a basic recipe calling for 2 cups flour, 2 teaspoons baking powder, 1 tablespoon sugar, and 1/2 teaspoon salt. Now we had to figure out what to add to this mixture instead of butter or vegetable shortening to make a dough. We decided to try plain yogurt, sour cream, milk, milk combined with melted butter, and whipped heavy cream, an idea we borrowed from a scone recipe.
The biscuits made with yogurt and sour cream were a bit sodden in texture, those with the milk and milk/butter combination were tough and lifeless, and the whipped cream biscuit was too light, more confection than biscuit. This last approach also required another step—whipping the cream—which seemed like too much trouble for a simple recipe. So we tried using plain heavy cream, without whipping, and this biscuit was the best of the lot. (Cream biscuits are not our invention. James Beard includes such a recipe in his seminal work American Cookery [Little, Brown, 1972].)
Next, we decided to do a blind tasting, pitting the cream biscuits against our conventional buttermilk biscuit recipe, which requires cutting butter into the flour. The result? Both biscuits had their partisans. The cream biscuits were lighter and more tender. They were also richer tasting. The buttermilk biscuits were flakier and had the distinctive tang that many tasters associate with good biscuits. Although neither biscuit was sweet, the buttermilk version seemed more savory.
At this point, we decided that cream biscuits were a worthy (and easier) alternative to traditional buttermilk biscuits. Still, we were running into a problem with the shape of the biscuits, which spread far too much during baking. We have always followed the conventional advice about not overworking the dough. In our experience, the best biscuits are generally made from dough that is handled lightly. This is certainly true of buttermilk biscuits.
But cream biscuits, being less sturdy than those made with butter, become soft and "melt" during baking. In this case, we thought, a little handling might not be such a bad thing.
So we baked up two batches: The first dough we patted out gingerly; the second dough we kneaded for 30 seconds until it was smooth and uniform in appearance. The results were remarkable. The more heavily worked dough produced much higher, fluffier biscuits than the lightly handled dough, which looked short and bedraggled.
We ran into a problem, however, when one batch of biscuits had to sit for a few minutes while we waited for the oven to heat up. During baking, the dough spread, resulting in biscuits with bottoms that were too wide and tops that were too narrow. Clearly, the biscuits had to be popped into the oven immediately after cutting. As for dough thickness, 3/4 inch provides a remarkably high rise, more appealing than biscuits that start out 1/2 inch thick. We also discovered that it was best to add just enough cream to hold the dough together. A wet dough does not hold its shape as well during baking.
Although we find it easy enough to quickly roll out this dough and then cut it into rounds with a biscuit cutter, you can simply shape the dough with your hands or push it into the bottom of an 8-inch cake pan. The dough can then be flipped onto the work surface and cut into wedges with a knife or dough scraper.
We also tested making drop biscuits, a method in which the dough is simply scooped up and dropped onto a baking sheet. These biscuits did not rise very well and their shape was inferior. It was also more time-consuming to drop the batter in individual spoonfuls than to simply shape the dough in one piece.
Our final ingredient tests involved sugar—the tasters felt that 1 tablespoon was a bit much, so we dropped it to 2 teaspoons—and baking powder, which we found we could reduce to 1 teaspoon with no decrease in rise. For oven temperature, we tried 375, 400, and 425 degrees, and the latter was best for browning.
Now we had the simplest of biscuit recipes: Whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl, add 11/2 cups of heavy cream, form the dough, knead it for 30 seconds, cut it, and bake for 15 minutes at 425 degrees. The results will surprise you.