Biscuits with Dad | Bake It Up a Notch with Erin McDowell

but you need this gets before no I never made biscuits before I guarantee these are going to be the best biscuits you have ever made [Laughter] [Music] hi and welcome to this episode of it get up a notch I'm Erin Jeanne McDowell and I'm so excited to be hosting this particular episode what we are gonna talk about all things biscuits biscuits are one of my favorite things to make and more importantly definitely one of my favorite foods to eat and I really think that people sort of misunderstand them they're actually a lot easier than most people think they are and best of all they're incredibly flexible we're going to be making two different kinds of biscuits in this episode we are going to be making kind of a classic buttermilk biscuit which I refer to as a cut style biscuit so those are sort of the typical biscuits that you're probably thinking of when I say the Rufus it but we're also going to make them much easier and much more user friendly drop biscuit whereas biscuits have more of a dough texture drop biscuits have more of a batter texture they're called drop this gets because who actually just drop them using a spoon for a couple of spoons onto your baking sheet and of course we're also still going to show you where things could go wrong and tell you how to fix them so let's get baking I know it's good that was good too just didn't say anything about the special guest oh you're right [Music] [Applause] Hey yeah hi how are you good for you it's so good to see you it's good to see you too I'm I'm good but I'm very hungry so I'm excited that we're gonna bake together because I wish I was there baking with you but since I can't be you've got to pick up the slack there and we're gonna make biscuits you've said in the past that you're not much of a baker but you actually helped me test a lot of the recipes for my first cookbook and biscuits are a lot easier than people realize as long as you know kind of these core rules so we're gonna make you into a biscuit making machine okay I'm ready the thing about thinking as I know I told you before is that it's always better to be precise but biscuits are actually really easy to do by eye so I'm gonna measure with a scale because I'm a baker and I can't help myself but you can just measure with cup measures and I'll tell you what the measurements are we're going to start with flour and I'm gonna do 600 grams and you're gonna do 5 cups of all-purpose flour okay I like to use the scale because it actually means less dishes but your house the rule is I think whoever does the cooking the other person has to do the dishes right sort of although most of the time it's just me doing the dishes no matter what because your mom's such a good cook we're gonna make her biscuits today that she's gonna be in love with I'm pretty sure and you're doing the flour just right Boop method the scoop and scrape I have watched some of your other videos and learned that skin prints great I hope so now we need two tablespoons of baking powder which i think is 12 grams I usually still measure the smaller ingredients like this with the tablespoon it's just a little bit easier and a lot of scales aren't precise enough to do really small measures like one or two grams and that seems like a lot of baking powder but that's how we get these like lofty flaky biscuits so sometimes people think that it's a mistake even in the recipe they're like that can't be right we don't need that much but we do we also need one teaspoon of fine sea salt or kosher salt is fine too if that's all that you've got I've got some fine sea salt so if you've got a little whisk or something or even just a fork you could give it a whisk okay now we need cold butter 12 tablespoons which is one and a half sticks and it got to be cold this is what we're about filling in our britches as we speak how many cubed how do I don't know how to cube it I mean that do I just kind of into little pieces yeah usually what I do is I cut it I cut the whole stick in half lengthwise and then I to rotate it and cut it in half again so you've like cut the whole stick in quarters yep just like that yep and then just cut it in like about half inch cubes it doesn't have to be super precise so don't worry if some are a little bigger and some are a little smaller when you cut it this always is what happens to me like they're in cubes but they're still kind of stuck together so after you cut them you kind of want to intentionally separate each cube and drop it into the flour because we want every individual cube to get fully coated and flour before we start okay so like I'm at this point right now okay and I want to get these into little quarter-inch pieces yes perfect once I get some of it in here so it's on but I need that light go ahead and and mix this around before I put more in kind of fluff it you know like just toss them all do you say that you have like hotter hands or colder hands probably hotter they don't feel hot they're not cold okay do you want to use your hands or do you want to use the tool which is this guy yeah we yeah we have one of those the pastry cutter or whatever well I like the squishing for a while the only problem is if you get it too hot then yeah exactly there's two things you can do you can always put it in the fridge or freezer for just like a few minutes if you feel like the butter is getting soft or you can always switch to the pastry cutter halfway through if you want but I like the feeling of junior with my hands too it makes me feel like I'm really big feels kind of good I just realized that we better tell people cuz some people might know but we better tell people where we are respectively so I'm of course at my house in New Jersey and you are I'm in my house outside of Lawrence can't just down the farmers Turnpike okay I think I'm getting pretty close here oh I don't have any big pieces left yeah you don't want any big pieces you kind of want everything to be about the size of peas or a little bit smaller okay yeah that's pretty good I think yeah my phone is covered with them Wow yeah so I got it off I think okay welcome into my life once you've got everything about the size of peas we're gonna grab the buttermilk I stay in the recipe one 3/4 to 2 cups so actually tech do you have one of these like the glass time I do I think they're under in the lazy susan line I know where they are I got one yeah I don't know I'm telling you where they are in your Oh these are more accurate when you're measuring liquids than the little cops so one entry quarter cup to start and then what do I do it first thing you're gonna do is you're gonna make kind of a hole in the center of your hole and we call that like making a well in the center and then you're gonna pour the buttermilk into the well spatula is good for mixing this just start and then we might switch to our hands because it gets like a little bit easier with your hands at the end but at the beginning the spatula is good because with biscuits you really really don't want to over mix them because that's when they're like hard as a rock and not tender and flaky once it's kind of like started to combine but it's not you know there's still maybe some dry pockets it's not very even you can take your hands if you want and start mixing this way I'm glad we're doing this because I would have fun oh my goodness there's not nearly enough liquid but it's still there still like just flour okay so then what you're gonna do and this is the same thing I do with pie dough actually you can kind of take the part that has come together and lift it out and even just set it on the counter next to you I know it seems a little messy but we're actually gonna be pressing it out on the counter in a few minutes so it's really not like when I do this there's still a lot of just dry flour in this that's okay just set that piece aside and start adding a little more buttermilk into what's the dry bits left in the bowl and then we'll add that dough back to it and what do I just add a little herb specify an amount we can use up to a quarter cup more so if you want to measure a quarter cup or if you want to just eyeball it honestly that eyeballing it is totally fine in this particular case I'm just gonna put this other reason than they'll say the texture that we're looking for is like it should be moist enough to come together but it shouldn't be crazy wet or sticky I think I'm gonna need just a little more though you can always add more hard to take away so that was like a piece of data say you like I know I need more if it's not coming together yeah well no I'm gonna show you mine yes see mine is still mine still I need more yeah you just add a little more if you're totally coming together but you just don't want to add too much that it's like crazy sticky and cuz then that's like gonna make for us again when pastries like this are overly hydrated they actually get tougher they get crisper and tougher now let's see what luck I have I want to hear some more fearlessness in your voice dad I think that looks good and it's okay that it's not like smooth that there's that it's all crinkly and okay cool that's exactly like mine it looks kind of like a brain yes cauliflower cauliflower yes that is okay so leave it in your bowl for one second and grab a little flour to sprinkle on the counter okay just a little bit yeah the bolter flour is to use as much as you need to prevent it from sticking but if you use too much that flour is getting like absorbed into the baked good so that's really the only reason why we want to like use only what we need okay so a lot of people kind of make a mistake I think with their biscuits you mentioned earlier like do I need to grab my rolling pin and I actually think that the rolling pin encourages people to go too far one of the biggest mistakes that people make with their biscuits is they just make them too thin you're not gonna have a Tull flaky biscuit if you start with dough that's only like that big so we're just gonna use our hands and you can kind of flour your hands if you need you're just in the flour it's on the counter and we're gonna press the dough out to about 1 inch thick and we want to try to maintain like a rectangle shape you don't have to know this is whatever shape you get is just fine and so about an inch thick and then I think I've told you a little bit about this before but you know when you make puff pastry how you make folds in the dough because it helps make all the layers if you don't have to do it all fancy-like but it just one fold for biscuits makes them crazy flaky so we're gonna fold it in half and then we'll fold it again into court so it's folded into quarters and it'll be quite tall like the packet will be like this now oh yes perfect ok now let's wrap it in plastic wrap and we're gonna toss it in the refrigerator and we can clean up a little bit okay so how long it needs to go in the fridge sort of depends on how long the whole process took you like today it probably only needs anywhere five to 15 minutes in the fridge but you know if you were to do this again in a Kansas July or a Kansas August give it like the full 30 minutes for sure but I think it's been long enough and when take it out of the fridge before you take out of the fridge if you want to flour your surface again you could get it ready see you do it with your scoop and I like to do it the Baker's throw alike okay so start doing the same thing you can kind of flour your hands and press it out and again we only want it to be about an inch thick don't press it too thin that's important there are two ways to cut biscuits and I have sort of a preference which is I like to just cut them with my bench scraper or like a knife into squares because that way I don't have to like ever reroll them or repack them out so I just like doing it that way but if you want round biscuits you want to use a round cutter so you can do either way I think I'm going to cut mine into squares if you're making it into squares what are you doing cut it in half and then yeah so I usually cut it in half and then just cut each half into six pieces sometimes also to help make myself more even is I just like I cut in half then I cut the halves in half and then I know that each of those corners will be three pieces if sometimes makes it a little bit easier and don't worry if they're not quite squares if they're like mine are looking kind of rectangular and that's totally fine because I'll show you what we'll do minor table rectangular so we'll see here so her mine look see yeah like this yeah yeah that's okay so now this is what you'll do dad after you get them all you're just actually gonna squish them a little bit now if you have more of a square shape you don't have to do this little pushy thing but you know this is all my whole thing about biscuits is that people don't think they're easy at all and my little thing is that you can pretty much I balled up and you can put them on your baking sheet stagger them but they can be relatively close cuz they're not gonna spread a lot so the only real thing if you don't want to do by squeezing them too much is warming them up a time with your hands two of them aren't going to be very big cuz they like my square was not swear okay so what you can do then is for the smallest ones you should put them towards the inside of the baking sheet and keep the thicker ones towards the outside because the outside of the baking sheet is always gonna bake a little bit more then the very center so that way the smaller ones don't risk getting like crazy okay okay so now we need a little finishing for them so I made an egg wash which is just one egg and a little bit of water or milk just whisk together a little bit of water in here - yep I I mean you can just eyeball it I usually just do a splash from the faucet but about a tablespoon is what I always say yeah brush just use a pastry brush to brush them on the top if anyone ever doesn't have a pastry brush you can even just use your hands to put a little bit of egg wash on so if your oven isn't preheated you would want to put them in the fridge and keep them cold till you're ready to go and you can actually even fries biscuits and bake them straight from frozen fries um at this point right now with all made ready to go you could you take them out like rocks and just stick them straight in there and the only thing that you do different is you have to bake them at a lower temperature for longer so I rather written in the recipe but you bake them at 375 for like oh and you have to add maybe 10 minutes to the big time because they're so frozen but it works great and it's like a nice thing you can do ahead of time for Thanksgiving or you know whatever so we're gonna put them into the oven okay just got a timer for 15 minutes to start to be turned half way through or slept under that's why I had you only set it for 15 minutes okay turn around good and it's also a good opportunity to see because just again biscuits really are something you can do by eye so maybe this time you might have made them a little thicker than you make them next time and so it's really good to kind of get those visual cues of when they're done because the taller the biscuits the longer it takes to bake of course but the taller the biscuit the better I think mine were probably at least an inch and a half tall that's what I like to hear because so many people Pat it out to like half an inch thick or even smaller and then the thing is there is all that chemical leavener in there so it will pop up but it's just not gonna be that kind of impressive like biscuit and so it also kinda depends on what you're going for it because sometimes maybe you want something a little smaller because you're gonna you know dunk it in chili or something and you don't want like a big but when I'm making something just to eat a biscuit or to make this get some gravy I want the really tall flaky biscuit all right so with biscuits they're really very easy to do but there are still a lot of opportunities for things to sort of go awry and it's really all about learning to do it by eye and really learning what it should feel like what it should look like a different places so there are four common issues that I see the most when people are making biscuits the first one is overworking the job now this one is a little bit tricky because the biscuit might even look great might even look perfect but it's gonna be really tough so I always like to refer to it as that line from one of my favorite movies of all time it's sort of like a full-on monet it'll look like a good biscuit but inside it's gonna be kind of dry and tough it's just not gonna be the best biscuit that you've ever had this tray is some overworked biscuits and like I said at first glance they kind of look pretty okay but when I open them up you can even tell by how hard it is for me I can't even open it very easily and it's just difficult to tell without really being able to feel it with your hands but it is very dense and dry compared to the other biscuits even though it's the exact same recipe and the thing that's particularly crazy about this is the dough doesn't necessarily look any different either it just is going to look like regular biscuit dough overworked dough is going to happen when you're kneading too much you're stirring too much maybe you tried to add inclusions and to try to get them even you started stirring more aggressively so you want to avoid it if you end up overworking your dough and you sense that you've been mixing it for too long and you just are worried about it you can enlist the help of that folding method that I described in the biscuit recipe which is optional but if you do it even when you sense a tougher biscuit or kind of creating some layers but remember to handle it as minimally as possible because every little bit that you continue to work in it's just gonna make it a little bit tougher the next of the common issues that I see is that people just make biscuits - then they press them out into a much shorter disc of dough or a rectangle of dough like I did intentionally here to show you guys this piece of overworked dough represents more of the thickness that we actually are looking for whereas this is much too thin it's about half the height and by pressing it thin the biscuits are still going to turn out tender and flaky and golden-brown but they're just gonna be kind of sad and flat looking they're just not gonna have that height so it's not a sign that you made any kind of mistake in your biscuit preparation it's just assignment next time Pat it out a little bit less so that you start with a tall flaky biscuit to end up with a tall sweet unison the third issue that can sometimes happen is the dough getting too warm and this can happen if your ingredients are at room temperature or too warm it can happen if your environment is really hot it's summer and you don't have any air conditioning or anything on it haven't have a lot of circumstances and lovely with biscuits the key to avoiding that is just whenever you feel like getting soft especially if you feel the butter soft it looks shiny or melty in any way what you want to do is refrigerate it you can refrigerate it at any stage you can refrigerate the partially mixed dough you can refrigerate the dough already Pat it out into a rectangle you can refrigerate the dough once it's shaped you can really do it at any stage to give it a little bit of time this is some dough that I mix and then just left at room temperature and you'll be able to see that for one thing it will not hold its shape it's very like kind of flimsy and soft and it is sticking to my hands because it's very warm and the butter is very warm and what that translates to when it comes out of the oven are these which again they don't necessarily look the worst at first glance but what happens in the oven was lots of butter melted out of these biscuits so the most flavorful ingredient and one of the most tenderizing ingredients sort of just disappeared and it ended up on our parchment paper and our baking sheet instead of staying inside the biscuit so though the biscuits might look pretty good they might not be quite as tall as you would like they the real thing is that when you bite into them again they're going to be tough and they are going to wax flakiness they're gonna feel lot denser okay the final and really one of the most common mistakes people make it comes when they aren't cutting the biscuit so as I described before you can really cut the biscuit any shape that you want but whether you're using a knife or a cutter you want to try to use a very clean Swift motion and that means you're using a cutter to punch out your biscuits pressing down one time one time only and biggest mistake you can make is to twist that cutter will you not want to twist the cutter you want to just press down lift it out even if you have to use a spatula or your hands pick up the biscuit off the work surface that's what you want to do when you twist the cutter you're actually compressing the layers that you've worked so hard to create in your flaky biscuit so you're compressing the butter you're sort of forcing the butter to be pushed down onto the sides of the biscuit or you're compressing the physical layers if you did the folding and you're just going to end up with that same sort of problem a very dense very flat biscuit even though again you did not only break it you just made a little mistake cutting that is pressing down clean and what you would do is you would just lift it out straight but if you press down and twist to release the biscuit from the dough you can actually see there is one of those examples of the compression that happened and there too so the real takeaways here are keep that this get so cold handle it as minimally as possible and you're gonna end up with really really big beautiful fluffy biscuits every time remember you're in control of this situation so just refrigerate it whenever you need to have con when you're handling have your ingredients ready you're gonna have the best biscuits of your life comment okay so now that you have successfully mastered the buttermilk biscuit we're going to try another type of biscuit which are arguably much easier and that's what I like to do on this little showdown as I like to show the harder one first because if you can do the harder one then you can definitely do the easy one and I think you would argue that that was it's actually that hard right if I was just reading without kind of no I wouldn't know where I was there and I think I'm waiting over work for sure I mean it's also really easy to over work it if you don't know what you're looking for that's that's why I'm always talking about that like thinking with your senses these are drop biscuits and drop biscuits are more of a batter like consistency than a dough consistency and because of that they actually are really good for adding inclusions and so I asked you do you want to make a sweet one or a savory one because sometimes I'll add like fruit into it or you know all kinds of things and you said that you had what do you have at the house wait white cheddar and Charles perfect I don't have any white cheddar I only have yellow cheddar and I don't have any choice I have scallions but that will work too so I have to chop my scallions and shred my cheese really quick so we'll do that and you're just gonna have to watch because I think you already prepped your ingredients right my Chinese are ready they're straight from the garden I'm so jealous of that because I couldn't even find them in the store let's go get them from the garden so can you remind me from the recipe how much shredded cheese I need actually you're teaching me this there's a cup in a corner okay and the chives or the scallions or anything you're gonna add honestly you can also kind of eyeball it you can add what you want a hat because you know with chives you might want to add like a half a cup but with rosemary you might not want to add a whole half cup of rosemary that might be too intense so you can kind of just do what feels right and then I do like to get the inclusions whenever you're making a biscuit that has inclusions in it you want to get them ready before you start because we want the dough we want to mix easily and quickly as okay I think that's gonna be good okay so we need three and a half cups all-purpose flour oh sorry three cups three cups which is three hundred and sixty grams of all-purpose flour before you put your flour away will you lift it up and show your flour container because we have the stable because I start my flour the same way mom taught me now we need this one has both baking powder and baking soda in it so we made one and a half teaspoons of baking powder and 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda [Music] and on this we need some salt again this is a little bit of a smaller recipe so we're only going to use 1/2 teaspoon of salt and you also remember that the cheese is salty so we also don't want you know to end up with biscuits that are like way too salty okay so you can stir those together to combine and once your dry ingredients are my oh wait I forgot one ingredient we also need three tablespoons of granulated sugar and sometimes people say because we're making a savory biscuit and so people say to me why do you have to put sugar in it if you leave it out it just makes the biscuits a little bit more they're not as soft and fluffy okay so now we're gonna do the same thing we got to cut our butter so we can cut it into the same sized cubes that we cut before you only need one stick or eight tablespoons 113 grams listen is like right yep and then we'll do the same thing kind of eventually once you get them all cut you'll want to toss each piece so that it's fully coated in flour I think my time is also about to go off for the biscuits who they tall they're doing all kinds of crazy ways right now we'll see what happens they don't look as pretty but hopefully they'll be tasty do we need to reset the timer to like another 15 oh yeah good thank you for reminding me because I didn't set mine either yes send it for another 15 actually set it for twelve are you using the pastry cutter this time I am cool we're just going to do the same thing they should be about the size of peas bill for drop biscuits it's actually okay if they're even smaller so that's why I said it's actually also something you can do in the food processor if I were doing it in the food processor just kind of on low but further would you just stop it and feel it or I think what I would suggest is just pulsing it and then taking off the lid and usually you can kind of see when the butter is the right size just by taking off the lid and then what I will say is even if you mix the butter in the food processor it's still a good idea to mix in the liquid or the dairy product the buttermilk by hand because liquid loves to get trapped under the food processor blade and you'll think that it's not done and you need to add a little more but then when you go to take it out it'll be real soft and soupy okay I think we're pretty much there on my end we're gonna add the cheese and the chives or in my case the scallions now and the only thing that you have to decide because you can choose this you can add all the cheese or you can save a little bit to put some on top which just kind of looks nice I'm in the Edit and then just mix it in again yep and we want to add the inclusions before we add the liquid because if we add them after it's harder to get them mixed in evenly without risking over mixing is that about enough for the tops yeah that's perfect I would say biscuits are probably one of my favorite pastries to eat I love just get some gravy for breakfast and I love when I come home to Kansas I usually cook breakfast for you guys we also sometimes make a dish that or I tried to make a dish anyway that you had a lot when you were younger do you know what I'm talking about no I'm not you're the guy who pizza okay the guy who paid well when you say younger I'm thinking about as a child the guy who pizza was like him from my early adulthood when I was in Costa Rica it's tough yeah describe what gyuto is it's a the leftover of black beans and rice from the night before you take them and you mix them together and mash them up and then you kind of put them back you know fry them just a little bit in the pan till you get them and then you make your eggs and put eggs on top I want to eat that right now so you need the buttermilk again so you can grab it from the fridge and I kind of wanted to do it a little bit different just to show how versatile especially drop biscuits are so what I'm going to do is I'm going to use sour cream instead of buttermilk and you can actually use sour cream you could use creme fraiche you could use yogurt and what we need to start with about 3/4 of a cup but this is that same sort of situation that you know it's really kind of more about doing it by eye and this one is going to be a lot softer it should look a little bit more like we're gonna use a scoop just stupid it's not something we could touch with our hands and press it out shake it and I actually really like using sour cream it's a little bit richer than using buttermilk of course but it has this like even like stronger tang to it it's also a nice way if you have like sour cream or yogurt that's about to go bad baking with it is like a really great way to use some of it up we're mixing this before we put the egg in oh thank you for reminding me dad yes go ahead and make umm well in the center see I told you Danis not helping me make drop biscuits not the other way around normally I would say to whisk it in with the buttermilk but this is fine too in fact this is how I would do it if we were doing it in the food processor so there's one small question we are getting these farm eggs from down the road and this particular batch is small okay why don't you weigh the egg yeah and I because it's there will be one large is about 57 grams if I when I looked it up okay and one yeah one large egg should be 57 six or seven grams and what I would say dad is it one egg isn't enough start with just the yolk from the second egg and what you'll do since we already started mixing is you'll put it in the well and we'll whisk it with a fork in the well to loosen up the egg and then you'll just stir it to combine [Music] you're mixing that now mostly by hand I am only because I just can't not I like to have my hands be sticky with dough but you can probably do it with just the spatula you want I just find that sometimes what happens just like happen with a buttermilk biscuit is that there's always these like tiny little patches oh that's my time sometimes there's these tiny little patches that stay flowery like you sort of experience when we were mixing the buttermilk biscuits mixing it by hands helps you break up some of the pieces but it is it is Messier this time trying to get enough oxide because I need to take these other biscuits out though yes we do and you know what you can do actually that to help get some of it off put a little flour in your hands and the dry flour will help scrape all the dough off how mom's doing some flour into your hands just kidding okay I'm gonna look at my business really quick Wow they are looking good - oh yeah we look great look here's mine I am minor minor you can always think of it you can always take them a little darker if you like that but yours definitely look done - so I think we're good to go I'm just gonna leave them to cool and we can go back to our other biscuits and for these biscuits like first of all we're already done making them they're much faster than the other biscuits no folds required the only thing that's really important to remember is that unlike buttermilk biscuits what you don't spread very much drop this gets spread a lot so we're not a lot but they're going to spread so we'll actually need two baking sheet lined with parchment paper okay so now you need a scoop and like a big-ish scoop this times they're called drop biscuits cuz all you gotta do is drop them onto the baking sheet you're just putting six on a baking sheet like this dad you just want to stagger them yeah okay and you I'm lit up do I want to fill it up to overflowing or yeah I like it when they're a little overflow just a little bit and they can also the word I always use for this is we want them to stay looking craggy craggy like you don't want them to be really smooth you want them to have some texture I forget the name of this restaurant when we were going down south and we stopped down there the Bootheel of Missouri where they had to throw trolls oh yeah waiters three rolls I don't remember the name of the place now I don't even know if it's there but it's a big ol place and if you want a little roll they just throw it to you maybe we should try it out for next Thanks yeah mom'll love that so the other thing really quick after you get your cam line you can turn your oven down to 375 because we don't bake these at 400 bake at 375 degrees Fahrenheit the nice thing I'll drop biscuits is you really never need to chill them before baking you can if you're like oven wasn't preheated you know you it was real hot you wanted to but they really don't need it so it's just like a much quicker faster you know getting from zero to biscuit much faster [Music] am i pushing these down no don't push them down and just put a little bit of cheese on top and don't worry if some falls on the parchment that's totally fine you'll end up with a tasty tasty cheese snack because when cheddar cheese bakes in the oven it almost forms like its own cracker can we put them in the oven then yep put them in the oven at 375 you can set a timer for 12 minutes start I love it here's mine I'm eating it playable what do you think I think I need to take more than one bite that's the answer I wanted to hear they're very tender and the best part is how buttery they are I think they even I'm not I didn't even butter mine and I think it tastes like butter but now I'm gonna butter the other half and they're tall right yours look tall I know some of them kind of flopped over and actually that's one other thing I was gonna tell you some styles of biscuits they bake them in like a cake pan or a nine by nine or a nine by 13 pan because then the biscuits are all right next to each other and what they say that that does is that way the biscuits support each other as they rise and so that's something else that you can try just like kind of you don't need to give them any space the only difference is you don't get as much of this like browned exterior because where they're touching of course they're they're soft they don't get that that Brown thing [Music] so what do you think you'll make them again yes yes especially when you can put him in the freezer mm-hmm need me to make up a batch have him ready the key to the flaky is the butter being pretty the same size it's a combination of the size of the butter and the temperature of the butter and the oven so it's kind of the same thing that works anytime you're dealing with something that has a large quantity of butter so pie dough biscuits puff pastry all those flaky delicious things what it is is the size of the butter determines how large the flakes are going to be so for biscuits you actually want smaller like more dispersed flakes and then you know for like pie dough you want big fat you know like very flaky very tender so what happens is when the cold dough hits the oven the water that's in the butter evaporates and it creates steam and it like physically pushes the dough so if the butter is really big it can push it up more but it also can risk melting before it does that so that's why for biscuits we like the butter a little bit smaller a little bit of pop of steam and they're really flaky and the way I think that you can tell kind of the flakiness is looking sometimes at the side of the biscuit like you just see where it's risen because you can literally see the flakes like that yeah dad that's so good it looks great I'm so proud oh good wait will you show them your butter dish I love their butter says it's a Buddha butter dish I love it I love it so so tender so flaky it's time to turn the drop biscuits when I put the drop biscuits I'm gonna rotate the racks back there on two so the ones that are on the bottom rack I'm gonna put him at the top and vice versa and then go ahead and set for another 12 minutes I won't tell the story about when the diner and the guy who said he was going out west oh yeah I was working in New Bedford Massachusetts right after college teaching and I went to a little Portuguese diner around the corner from school and this was a nice fellow it was the first time I'd ever had kale soup and I think we said stuff and it was delicious I got to know him pretty well through the school year and one day he said to me hey I'm going out west I said oh that's great you know he said yeah I've never been out west and I know you're from out west and stuff and I said yeah I said well I'll be interested to hear what you see and he said well I said where you going I said I'm going to Philadelphia from New Bedford loves West but it wasn't exactly out west okay I think my biscuits are finally done when to you know ease the way you know that they're done is when you press in the center and there they spring back a little yeah that's what this did now you can eat these straight you can eat them with butter you can yeah you could use them to make like a little sandwich like we did at Easter you could put a little like just cut in half with some ham or some turkey inside but honestly I kind of just like to eat these on their own and then this these have the crazy reheating technique that I was telling you about so these keep pretty well because of that sugar Sugar's a preservative so they keep well for that reason they stay soft but that's the biggest thing that will happen as they get a little bit older they're gonna stay good for two even three days but the older that they get they will start to get like a little less soft and fluffy like a little stale typical so what you do is you take each biscuit that you want to refresh you wrap it in like a damp paper towel and you microwave it I know this sounds insane but you might crave it for like 10 to 15 seconds and it sort of steams it and puts the moisture back inside and then you're good to go what you save just save them the next couple of days in the refrigerator or I just saved these at room temperature in an airtight container but I they're still really hot but I think if you're not worried about burning your mouth you can try one mmm it's delicious and you know those little cheese crackers I was talking about if you get any like this I see a mom arm like this yes exactly these are my favorite parts I just eat this okay so wait while you eat I want to show you something I've shown my favorite dad pictures and this this is your wedding day and I like this one because you're dancin and you've got what what's that a bottle of tequila but this is actually one of my favorites even though it's not like a very good picture cuz it was at night but that's you reading to everyone at your wedding from your favorite book of poetry that you read to me from this book all the time right Carl Sanders but this is actually maybe my favorite picture of you because you're eating cake and grandma gave me this picture these aren't necessarily of my all-time favorites but they're the two that we're around oh my gosh shall marina heron and then the other is Valerie Marin and then this is a baking errand Oh gingerbread house my favorite tradition I love making gingerbread houses um well I wish I could be baking there with you for Father's Day but this was a pretty good sub if I do this this was a lovely sub and that soon enough you'll be able to come back home and we'll bake together well I love you very much a happy Father's Day thank you love you too yeah you're a biscuit Pro [Music] I had so much fun making biscuits today and the real reason why is because biscuits are so adaptable there are so many ways to make something they're really very easy my baking buddy a gay my dad kind of proved that he's never even made biscuits before he made two kinds today they were incredibly delicious and we both had a lot of fun weekend's together I can't wait till I can bake biscuits with him in person again but for now virtual baking is pretty fun too and I love that I was able to show him and you just how versatile biscuit recipes are you can add blueberries you can add parmesan and garlic you can add really whatever you want to make a savory or a sweet biscuit and if you learn to do this with your eyes and my touch I feel you can really make a biscuit almost without a recipe which is one of my favorite things about them I can't wait to see what kind of just gets you dream up please be sure to tell me about them in the comments of this video or on Instagram send me all your biscuit successes if you enjoy baking with me today be sure to like and subscribe so you can see future episodes of baking up a notch and I just love baking with you so wishing you lots of biscuits and happy baking alright well we love you [Music] we did it my dad's making biscuits [Music]

Channel: Food52

Views: 343,012

Keywords: Food52, food, cooking, recipe, chef, foodie, cook, home cooking videos, erin mcdowell, bake it up a notch, bake it up a notch with erin mcdowell, buttermilk biscuits, cut biscuits, drop biscuits, drop biscuits cheddar, baking tutorial, homemade biscuits, buttermilk, cheddar, chives, father's day, cooking with dad, flaky biscuits, flakiest biscuits, brimley the dog, flat biscuits, tough biscuits, soft biscuits, thanksgiving, easter, make-ahead biscuits, reheat biscuits in microwave

Id: sf4k9jnj_ns

Length: 51min 24sec (3084 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 21 2020