Biscuits: The Important Difference Between Flaky and Fluffy | What's Eating Dan?

as a professional cook and baker i know a lot of things that are definitely true about biscuits for instance biscuits are always nice and buttery a good biscuit is a flaky biscuit if you don't use a super low protein flour your biscuits will bake up tough okay who's doing that anyway one truth that cannot be refuted is that to make good biscuits you have to keep all of your ingredients nice and cold okay okay i get it i was wrong about all of that man that's annoying look the truth is some biscuits don't contain butter at all others are better made with a higher protein flour and some instead of having flakiness trade on an almost cake-like tenderness and as we'll learn in this episode sometimes heating things up is better than keeping them cold the world of biscuits is surprisingly complex and varied hard and fast rules break down quickly as we move between biscuit styles but we have to get our bearings somehow what if i told a tale of two biscuits one would be the flakiest tallest most ultra butteriest biscuit you've ever seen and the other the easiest to make plushies most tender biscuit you've ever laid eyes on those two styles of biscuit ultra flaky versus ultra tender and cakey couldn't be more different and yet their ingredient lists start out remarkably similar each begins with three cups of all-purpose flour and then incorporates roughly equal amounts of sugar baking powder baking soda and salt let's do a quick rundown on each of these ingredients first up flour now we're using an all-purpose flour for both of these recipes but the traditional choice for biscuits is a low protein all-purpose flour that is also bleached lower protein plus bleaching means a flour that has really low gluten forming potential and that leads to baked goods that are really tender and have less rise and lift but here's the thing there's more than one way to make a tender baked good and extreme tenderness isn't always best depending on the biscuit style next up is sugar now sugar is obviously sweet but the amount we're using in these recipes is so little you wouldn't even notice it so why include it at all well sugar's primary function in these biscuits is to improve browning as we talked about with cauliflower brussels sprouts and burgers better browning equals better flavor next is baking powder now baking powder contains baking soda which is alkaline plus at least one acidic ingredient when dry the baking soda and acids remain separate and totally uninterested in one another but just like with gremlins when you get them wet they multiply wait that's not right when they get wet they react and create carbon dioxide which leavens the biscuit so for adding baking powder which contains baking soda and we know that that combination is already giving lift to the biscuit why are we adding additional baking soda well that additional baking soda will actually raise the ph of the dough and all those delicious browning reactions happen faster at higher ph so we add baking soda and we get better browning the baking soda also seasons the biscuits directly the slightly salty savory taste of baking soda is a key component in things like pancakes and you guessed it biscuits if it wasn't in there you would notice and finally salt that's there entirely for seasoning and a little bit goes a long way if however you're interested in seeing me eat an entire spoonful of salt i do highly recommend my video on how to make sea salt so far our tale of two biscuits sounds an awful lot like a tale of one biscuit which is still a tale i would tell just doesn't have quite the same panache well fear not things are about to diverge and get really really dramatic to help me tell the rest of the story i've invited two baking pros to join me in the kitchen cook's illustrated deputy food editor andrea geary and cook's illustrated senior editor andrew janzigian each brings with them decades of recipe development and baking experience and their own recipes let's go to the kitchen andrew will be making his ultimate flaky biscuits and andrea will be making her easiest ever biscuits first up ultra flaky andrew before we start baking let's look at some stats andrew's got all those dry ingredients that we just talked about in one bowl and into it he's creating two sticks of slightly frozen butter why frozen grated butter so that the pieces of butter stay individual in the inside the dough so that the layers will form and it'll get real flaky basically a biscuit will bake up flaky when sheets of dough are separated by sheets of fat i could say the same thing about a croissant or even puff pastry and that makes sense in each instance we're talking about lamination which is a fancy term for basically sandwiching layers of fat and dough together in a croissant the lamination is extensive and done with meticulous care to ensure ultra thin layers of both dough and fat biscuit lamination is a much more rustic affair for super flaky biscuits we add grated butter and then roll and fold the dough until that fat is distributed in layers now he adds chilled buttermilk now the water in the buttermilk will hydrate the flour and get some crucial gluten formation going then he dumps the dough onto the counter and it looks this looks really dry this is actually gonna come together into a biscuit dough yes all thanks to folding a little bit like laminating yeah it's exactly like lemonade this is basically a biscuit married to a croissant okay cool yeah andrew rolls the dough out into a rectangle and then folds it up like a business letter he then turns it 90 degrees and repeats that and repeats that and repeats that and repeats that that's five sets of folds but just look at that transformation after a quick chill he uses a sharp floured knife to trim the dough and then cut it into nine beautiful beautiful squares then we bake these off and just look at those layers we gotta do one of those like gratuitous pan up shots all the way yeah that's nice next up is andrea and the easiest biscuit recipe you'll ever see but first some stats andrea set out to make the easiest ever biscuit and that meant two things first it had to be a drop biscuit a drop biscuit means the dough is wet enough that it can be scooped straight from the mixing bowl and dropped onto the baking sheet no rolling folding or cutting required and second it had to be a cream biscuit instead of cutting in cold butter and then adding in cold milk or buttermilk you sub in one ingredient heavy cream which contains about 36 fat and 57 water that's one ingredient that provides all of your fat and water requirements so this is kind of a drop biscuit and a cream biscuit so together it's a dream biscuit so the first step is andrea takes that heavy cream and throws it in the microwave for about a minute on high power and wait a minute i thought we're supposed to keep everything nice and cold for these biscuits for this recipe you actually warm up the cream because this is both our fat and our liquid so here's the thing cream might look like a liquid but when it's cold the butter fat in it is solid if you add enough cold cream to make a droppable dough the biscuits will look fine before they go in the oven but once all that butter fat melts in the heat of the oven your biscuit flattens out into a pancake looking biscuit thing the microwave step brings the cream up to about 95 degrees which melts that butter fat it makes the cream more fluid now that she has her warm cream just check out how easy and fast this is check out that gorgeous browning and that tender plush interior whether you go ultra ultra flaky or super easy and tender i think we can all agree that this is definitely how to eat biscuits [Music] so are you flaky or easy i mean your biscuit preference let me know in the comments and don't forget to subscribe we'll see you next time

Channel: America's Test Kitchen

Views: 313,468

Keywords: biscuits, flaky biscuits, cream biscuits, drop biscuits, buttermilk biscuits, best biscuit recipe, biscuit recipe, how to make biscuits, cooking, baking, buttermilk, buttermilk biscuit recipe, cream biscuit recipe, easy biscuit recipe, recipe, baking recipe, america's test kitchen, americas test kitchen, cook's illustrated, cooks illustrated

Id: aC3ItbsmhVo

Length: 7min 31sec (451 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 14 2019