"I think one of the leading ways people online tend to rave about making good biscuits is to freeze the sticks of butter and grate them to incorporate them into the flour. It seems if your fat/oil soaks into the flour, that is what makes the biscuits dense and unappealing. I've tried many ways and many recipes, but have yet to equal the biscuits made with that darned Crisco!"
I freeze and shred my butter and quickly coat it with flour. I also add 2T of Coconut oil because I think of hydrogenated vegetable oil as the spawn of the devil. It gives my biscuits a bit of an exotic flavor.
Nancy Reading wrote:I'll have to find a good basic American biscuit recipe, but I'll throw another quirk in the dish: I'm starting to think they sound a bit more like soda bread? This is very simlar to scones too, but a savory version: (1 lb bread flour, 2 teasp bicarb of soda, 2 teasp cream of tartar, 1 teasp salt 1-2 oz lard, 1/2 UK pint sour milk/buttermilk, baked 425 deg F) This is often made as a round, Mum used to make small cheesey ones that we'd have with soup sometimes. Definitely better eaten fresh.
Irish soda bread
source (slightly different recipe) Scones (basic recipe) 8 oz self raising flour,1/2 teaspn salt, 1 teaspn baking powder, 1-2 oz butter, 1/4pt milk baked 450 deg F so almost the same. I put 1 oz caster sugar, substitute some of the milk for egg and tend to use bread flour, it makes the scones lighter and softer. Usually I don't put fruit in.
Is the only real difference in these recipes, apart from the sugar, the fat though? Scones tend to be made with butter....Or are they really variants of the same thing just evolved in different directions?
(edited to add soda bread picture)
This thread being revived is killing me, because I want them ALL!! Lol. American biscuits are a whole other thing unto themselves. While they're not sweet, their texture & flavor is completely different from any other bread I've had, and they are amazing with both savory and sweet toppings. But, it's really not like soda bread, either - the closest thing to it really is the shoe - and yet, it's not, lol. The main difference is in the flour. A plain biscuit and a plain scone, the exact same size will weigh quite differently, on a scale... hmmm... I wonder... let me see if I can find something that will help.
"The only thing...more expensive than education is ignorance."~Ben Franklin
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Here ya go, Nancy! I think I do let mine get a tiny bit more golden, but not a ton. But, this might give a better visual for texture. She's taking them out of the oven at about the 14:10 mark, with her hubby excitedly photo-bombing, with his little jar of sorgum, lol:
"The only thing...more expensive than education is ignorance."~Ben Franklin
"We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light." ~ Plato
Anne Miller wrote:
Cut in to crumbly stage:
1/4 teaspoon shortening
Is this right Anne? Seems like a tiny amount.
I'll check out Leigh's recipe too.
So for 'shortening' I'd use lard?
Thanks, I corrected the recipe to 1/4 Cup Shortening
The book was written in 1970 when shortening was very popular. I assume lard would work well.
Dear hubby only likes what is called "refrigerator biscuits" that are sold at grocery stores here so I have not made that recipe.
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Nancy Reading
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Location: Isle of Skye, Scotland. Nearly 70 inches rain a year
Thanks Anne, that makes more sense. I'll have to translate cups into weight somehow, so I can get the measurements right.
Carla, that video really helped. The dough looks much softer than a scone dough. It must be tricky to get that not to stick to everything! Maybe the folding with flour is part of the difference too - almost like a flaky or puff pastry made with soft scone dough.
Unfortunately the temperature here is so high I've not got the stove on. It's only about 22 degrees Celsius (72 degrees Fahreneit) but that's hot for here! I'm really looking forwards to trying to make some bisuits now! Maybe at the weekend......
Once you have it ready to cut, it isn't typically sticky, at all, but, it's still very soft and must be handled gently.
"The only thing...more expensive than education is ignorance."~Ben Franklin
"We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light." ~ Plato
Love all the recipes! Have to try them. But all through reading these posts I was reminded of a YouTube post I had seen so I thought I would share ...hope y'all enjoy it as much as I did!
Carla Burke wrote:She's taking them out of the oven at about the 14:10 mark, with her hubby excitedly photo-bombing, with his little jar of sorgum, lol:
Many thanks. So, this is the flour that Donna Minor is using in her BeautifulTooCreationsWithDonna video here.
This seems to be c. 6.7% protein, which is relatively low protein content for wheat flour in my experience. The self-raising flour my grandparents used in England to make English scones when I was little was apparently c. 9.6% protein. The 'cake flour' we have is 11% protein!
The gluten protein content will change the texture you achieve with a given preparation technique.
Then the fineness of the milling is also significant!
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Ac Baker wrote:This seems to be c. 6.7% protein, which is relatively low protein content for wheat flour in my experience. The self-raising flour my grandparents used in England to make English scones when I was little was apparently c. 9.6% protein. The 'cake flour' we have is 11% protein!
The gluten protein content will change the texture you achieve with a given preparation technique.
Then the fineness of the milling is also significant!
Actually, those are THE critical differences. This is southern white wheat, instead of the northern hard red wheat. The closest thing to it, that I can think of that might be available in the UK, is pastry flour. I'm not sure of the number that would be given, there - but what we in the USA call bread flour is "00" or "strong", there. This stuff would be at the opposite end of the flour 'toughness' spectrum, so... weak? Or simply soft, as the wheat itself is named, here?
"The only thing...more expensive than education is ignorance."~Ben Franklin
"We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light." ~ Plato
Nancy Reading wrote:......
Unfortunately the temperature here is so high I've not got the stove on. It's only about 22 degrees Celsius (72 degrees Fahreneit) but that's hot for here! I'm really looking forwards to trying to make some bisuits now! Maybe at the weekend......
Just drooling over all the recipes.....and with the chill entering the air of late! Now wanting to try a no-egg version to compare to my late father's egg-based recipe.
Just adding for those hot days....Solar Scones! The solar oven doesn't give them the nice crispy outer 'shell' that you get with a conventional oven or air-fryer, but it does still make a decent scone.
SconesDelSol.jpg
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According to my mum, my father (who grew up in west Devon) solved the jam/cream scone question by having cream on one half and jam on the other and eating alternate bites.
Some people have mentioned using buttermilk as the liquid in scones/biscuits/soda bread, but I don't think anyone has suggested whey, which I've found to also work very well. And I was also given a recipe for Italian canistrelli, which use white wine. The recipe didn't seem to make sense and I sort of turned them into something more fluffy and scone-like than I think they're supposed to be. But they were very nice.
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