Half-hour biscuits
Servings: 4
Preparation Time: 30 minutes
Ingredients
- 1 3/4 cups flour
- 1/4 cup corn meal
- 3/4 tblsp baking soda
- 1 tblsp cream of tartar
- 1 tsp sugar
- 1 tsp coarse sea salt
- 5 tblsp chilled, unsalted butter
- 2/3 cup yogurt
Steps
- Mix or sift together the flour, corn meal, baking soda, tartar, sugar, and sea salt.
- Add the butter and mix together or cut together until the butter is all no more than pea-sized pieces.
- Add the yogurt and mix together until just after it all comes together. Knead 8 times or 8 revolutions.
- Roll to about half an inch to an inch thick on a floured surface.
- Cut into 2 to 3-inch diameter circles using a biscuit cutter and place circles on cookie sheet.
- Let rest in the refrigerator for 15 minutes.
- Preheat the oven to 450F.
- Bake for 10 to 12 minutes.
This recipe began its life as the southern-style biscuit recipe in the Best of Food & Wine 1993. Over the years I’ve attempted to refine it to better fit my own style of cooking and eating.
As usual when baking with yogurt, you’ll get better results with yogurt that isn’t low-fat. If you can get a “cream-line” style yogurt where the cream floats to the top, use all of the cream here.
If you use baking powder, replace the baking soda and cream of tartar with one tablespoon of baking powder.
If you don’t have any corn meal on hand, increase the flour to two cups and drop the sugar to one teaspoon.
A food processor will make these biscuits even easier to make. You can just add each step to the food processor. At the end, as soon as the dough comes together, let it revolve eight times around the food processor, and then it’s ready to roll out.
- Best of Food & Wine 1993
- An overall great series, this installment contains salmon corn cakes, real-good southern biscuits, a simple kadjenou, chilled soba with orange-walnut dipping sauce, and many more simple and interesting recipes.
More bread
- The Complete Bread Cookbook
- This small book covers a lot of ground, but is nothing special. All the recipes I’ve tried work fine. All in all, it’s a worthwhile choice if you need more bread recipes.
- Buggy bread
- A mixed-grain bread with aniseed and blue corn meal, and several different grains.
- Sourdough rye bread
- Sourdough rye bread, a very thick, heavy bread similar to pumpernickel. It takes a few days to make but has a unique flavor worth the preparation.
More Good Food
- Quick bean and ground beef chili
- This makes a great chili, a great dip for tortillas, and a great lunch for freezing. And it’s a very fast recipe.
- Green bean salad
- Olive oil, garlic, and parmesan is a decadently simple sauce for many things: pasta, corn, zucchini, even, if you want to, steamed brussels sprouts.
- Pesto
- This zesty, lemony pesto is easy to make, and very versatile.
- Black bean and cilantro salsa
- An incredible salsa, filled with cilantro and other bright flavors. It is also very easy to make and can be whipped up in a few minutes.
- Half hour cookies
- From start to finish, you can be eating the first batch of these crunchy, sweet cookies in just under half an hour, using ingredients that, if you bake at all, you almost certainly already have on hand.
- Three more pages with the topic Good Food, and other related pages