Baking Powder Biscuit Recipe

Hi! I’m Chef David Bishop. Thanks for watching from the Chef to You. Today, I'm
going to teach you how to make some Baking Powder biscuits. Before we start and
sending everything together, let’s look at our ingredients.

We got buttermilk, butter, we’re going to use the butter to grease the bottom of the pans,
brush the biscuits after six minutes and brush is again when they’re finished. We got a
self-rising flour over here. I like salt in biscuit. You can use other brands. There are
several good one’s out there. Crisco shortening, good quality shortening is always
important when it comes to a biscuit. Now let us zoom in on this and let’s go and get
started.

We got our flour. We’re going to add the shortening to this, still done in the old fashioned
way with a couple of knives. Take these two knives and cut the shortening in to it’s about
a pea size. Now, there are four things to remember while I’m cutting up this shortening is
not over mixing your dough. What I’m doing right now, I'm playing with this flour for 10
minutes. You’re not going to activate the gluten and once that cold liquid is added and
any liquid is left and have added into this flour, you start creating glutens sort of a little
bit of mixing as possible.

Now, I got a few more seconds here, we’ve got all of our shortening cut in and a couple
of spots right here, all right. Save these knives in case you need to use it later. I like to
use a spoon or rubber hard rubber spatula at this point for my both hands don’t get dirty.
One hand is going to get some mix on a little bit and I’m going to try to keep my hands
dirty.

I’ll make a little belly in the middle. Pour our butter milk. All right, base is simply, just
mix it in till it is incorporated. You do not want to mix a lot. You don’t want to put on the
mixer, you do not want get electric mixer, you do not want to do anything like that and
what’s going to happen is you’re going to have it too tough, the gluten react too much to
it.

All right, you want just mix until all the flour’s incorporated. I’m going to add just a
pinch of butter milk. It’s always a judgment to call on the buttermilk. Today outside --
it’s a little damp outside so it’s going to affect it. You want a little bit tacky dough but
you don’t want your dough too runny either. It’s a bit runny and kind of sinking above
the bowl you know you’re way too wet. You want a nice texture, all right. As you can see
there, I've added this form pretty well into the bowl forming a ball.

All right our next step, now we put it out away. So, we’ll just have to wait here, I’m
going to sprinkle some flour right across the bottom here. This will allow you to use a
spoon so I don’t have to get my hands dirty at this point in time. They will be getting
dirty a little bit but not right now.

All that’s done in our way, now we’ll take some more flour, sprinkle across the top. This
is where Chef David differs from other people. I press mine down. This procedure
doesn’t matter as much as now or mixing your dough and not getting your oven at the
right temperature. What I like to do is fold this in, fold this side in, fold this side over,
and roll it. Now I press it down, tuck my sides in. All right, now I just press it out.
Whatever the desired thickness some people have thin biscuits, some like thick biscuits,
whatever desire you’d like. I used to go about a half an inch.

All right I got my dough mended out. You noticed how we didn’t over mix it. We didn’t
over work the dough. Next thing, I want to keep to remember is this right here. You want
to take the biscuit and cut them in sizes. I’m using the largest of three and we can take the
small one, make h’orderve type of biscuits, ham biscuits.

Next thing, I teach my students is connecting the dots. Every time you work at dough it’s
going to be tougher. We can't use the left over the second time but we’re going to try not
to anymore when we have to. What I mean by connecting the dots is you see right here, I
want to make dough between these two biscuits. So I connect my circles and I go on
rolls. I don’t go around the outside because I’ll waste the middle, all right.

It looks like I can get more right here. We bring a pan over here, we’ll take this pan right
here and take some of that butter that’s on here earlier, we brush where we put the
biscuits. This gives it a nice crisp bottom, now I require you spray the little pan whatever
you prefer. If you’re going to have a wet paper in these, you won’t need anything at all.

What, I’m going to do is just set these biscuits out here. Now you can see them right here.
I don’t want you to miss out on it. There are six and there’s another seven. All right, set
them aside just that you can rework your dough. You notice I've made up very little
squares up here. I might be able to get one more biscuit out of here. When you take your
leftovers, be careful again not to over work the dough. That’s really important. You just
want to fold it up one of this so it’s going to be flat on top, press it down, and take some
of the flour over here. Looks like a round and get one more biscuit to see when you
stretch this thing long ways here. I’m not going to be able to get too wide here.
Wonderful!

So here, I've got two, four, six, eight, nine biscuits. The next key thing for biscuit is a
proper temperature oven. You turn the oven to 425, some on this 450 and you want to
make sure the light is off I mean that oven is ready and you put it in that time. Don’t put
it in the oven five minutes early when the number is only at 350. That initial jump on a
biscuit is very, very important. I want to set this in the oven. We’ll be back in six
minutes.

Well, my biscuits are done. We’re going to brush them again with some butter. All right,
put them in the basket and now, I’ll be right back for some final comments. Let’s take a
little look at what we have made today. We've got nice hot biscuits with some butter
brushed on top of them. I've got some apple molasses here, some raspberry jelly right
here and look, I got some sausage. I know what I’m going to be doing. This is Chef
David Bishop cooking and teaching. You have a blessed day.