Homemade Southern Biscuits

Homemade Southern Biscuits - made May 25, 2019 from The Anthony Kitchen

A long while back, I splurged and (over)paid for a couple of bags of White Lily Flour on amazon. White Lily products aren't sold locally where I lived so online was the only way I could get them. At the time, I'd heard so much hype about how great White Lily flour was for cakes and biscuits that I succumbed to temptation and bought a couple of bags. Only to let them languish in my pantry for months. I even ended up moving them to my new place earlier this year. Now I'm looking at another move shortly and I couldn't bear moving them again, especially since their expiration date had just passed. Sigh.

So I decided to make biscuits and see if using White Lily flour would really make a difference. For context, I don't make very good biscuits. I follow the recipe, try to handle the dough sparingly, make sure my butter is cold, yada yada. But expert biscuit maker, I'm not.As my previous biscuit attempts will attest.

But I am nothing if not optimistic or persistent so I decided to give it another try. Of course, nearly every biscuit recipe I found on pinterest all called for buttermilk. Which I didn't have and, as I was going back to work shortly, didn't want to run out and get. I had milk, I had heavy cream, I had cream cheese but no buttermilk.

No matter - I found recipes that called for either milk, heavy cream or cream cheese so I decided to run an experiment and try out the different biscuit recipes, the more to use my White Lily flour on. The first recipe was this one that called for whole milk. I dutifully followed the recipe but realized too late that my White Lily flour was self-rising flour which already contained leavening ingredients and salt. I treated it like all-purpose flour and followed the recipe below.

I nearly convinced myself that would be okay as the flour had just expired so maybe adding the leavening agents would actually help. Ha. HAHAHA. *wipes tear*. That'd be a no.

For one thing, these biscuits didn't rise very much. Worse, they were too salty. They weren't bad, per se. Just eat them warm and add butter. But I've got nothing to brag about in how they turned out. All I can say is it at least used up some of the flour. I'm sure they would turn out if made properly so I should probably give the recipe another chance.

2 cups all-purpose flour, plus extra for working with dough
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into small cubes
3/4 cup whole milk

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
2. In a large mixing bowl, combine 2 cups flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt; whisk to combine.
3. Scatter the cubes of butter across dry mixture and, using a pastry blender or two knives, cut in the butter until the cubes are pea-sized.
4. Add the milk and stir with a wooden spoon until the dough comes together. Lightly knead the mixture with your hands, if necessary, to bring it all together. Do not overhandle.
5. Transfer the dough to a work surface dusted with flour and pat out until 1" thick. Cut into 2" squares or use a biscuit cutter to form the biscuits.
6. Transfer to the prepared baking sheet and bake for 15 to 18 minutes or until the biscuits are golden brown. Serve warm.