Your Cart is Empty
Recipe by Grist & Toll
These delicious biscuits are a great way to highlight the slightly nutty flavor of Sonora Wheat. They pair perfectly with honey like the Gallberry Honey, another Slow Food Ark of Taste ingredient in the Slow Food Box.
Yield = 6 one-inch high, 3-inch wide biscuits
9 oz G&T Whole Sonora Wheat Flour (2 cups)
2 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp baking powder
¼ tsp baking soda
1 tsp kosher salt
5 oz butter, cold even frozen (10 Tbsp)
8 oz buttermilk, plus additional for brushing (1 C)
Pacific Flake or fleur de sel for sprinkling
Preheat oven to 375. Line a baking sheet with parchment.
Take very cold butter directly from the refrigerator and grate it on the largest holes on a box grater. To keep your hands from getting messy just use a bit of the butter wrapper or some wax paper. Place the grated butter in the freezer to firm up.
In medium bowl whisk together flour, sugar, baking powder, soda and salt.
Take half of frozen butter and work into flour mixture pretty well. The goal is to coat a lot of flour with fat to help with tenderness. Then add remaining butter and cut in using a pastry cutter (or two knives if you don't have one), leaving some pea sized pieces.
A note from Nan about this process: "Specifically with whole grain flour, butter and fat are very, very good friends and help make baked goods more tender. Whole grains love to be coated in fat and contrary to white refined flour, you almost can’t work it in too much: you will not get a tough or unappealing product. It seems wrong, but it’s true. If you work butter or fat into whole grain flour and leave super big chunks, that just creates holes in the final baked product and compromises structure and integrity. This method of a two-step process of working in the fat lets you first coat the flour evenly for tenderness, then quickly work in the remaining to leave some bigger pieces for some flakiness (but since the butter is grated they’re not as big as with white flour and “pea” or “thumbnail” sized)."
Add buttermilk in 2 batches (you may not need all of it), mixing in gently with a rubber spatula until it will form a ball when you press it together.
Turn out onto a lightly floured work surface. Dust hands with flour and gather up dough. Press gently to create a thick rectangle.
Perform 4 folds, folding the rectangle in half then lightly pressing it down into another rectangle shape approximately 3 inches thick for each fold.
Neaten up the rectangle and use a knife to gently cut off folded edges (to open up layers on sides for expanding in the oven). Cut into 6 equal squares or use a circular mold or cutter to make classic round biscuits. Place on parchment lined sheet. Brush with additional buttermilk and sprinkle with sea salt. Bake until light golden, about 15-17 minutes.
Comments will be approved before showing up.
