They look good.

The good thing about baking is that it get easier. The cleanup doesn’t but everything else does.

@redhorsejacket

Your biscuits are square!

Did you fill thr pan with dough and then cut them before baking? Questions.

Well butter your biscuits!

Square biscuits have advantages. First off, you can cut them with a sharp knife instead of pinching your layers closed with a biscuit cutter. Second, their’s less waste and effort because you can roll up the trimmings for an extra “biscuit” instead of re-rolling out the scraps and cutting again. Third, they can sit closely in the pan to help each other rise.

May I ask what these buiscits actually are? The word means something different to me. These look more like some sort of white bread rolls, but then again not really…

In the US, “biscuit” refers to a type of small, crumbly bread, usually eaten for breakfast. They’re a signature food of the southern states and are often served with butter or gravy.

How is it made?

Think savoury scone and you’re most of the way there.

Those look scrumptious! ️ Did you sprinkle sugar or salt on top?

To add to this, there are drop biscuits and flaky biscuits (the southern kind, seen above). Drop biscuits can be like a much softer, more savory scone, but flaky biscuits are much lighter and layered, almost like a savory pastry often served with sausage gravy or red eye gravy.

Here’s a decent example of a recipe for this kind of biscuit. Lots of butter. Work the dough as little as possible so it stays flaky. Some recipes call for folding the dough a few times to create more distinct layers. https://www.melissassouthernstylekitchen.com/fluffy-southern-buttermilk-biscuits/

I’ve had British friends describe US biscuits as “butter scones.” They can be slightly savory, or slightly sweet, but only slightly.

Those look practically as flakey as a croissant

Helluva lot better looking than the bread I made yesterday. IDK how or why, but before popping it in the oven, it had risen so high out of my pan, I thought about cutting some off so it wouldnt spill and make a mess. Thank god I didn’t, becsuse it ended up shrinking in the oven and I ended up with a loaf only half an inch tall. I had made it so I could make a PB sandwich ‍

It tasted fine, but had the texture and crumble of a dry cake. I made it the exact same as I always do so I have no idea what could have gone wrong.

Ohh these look so good. Do you have a recipe?

Dude!

Dude!

Look at that fucking crust, all golden brown and sexy.

You gotta throw an nsfw tag on those biscuits!

American biscuits are a form of quickbread. Chemically leavened, with fats worked into the flour.

Super simple in terms of ingredients, and fairly easy to make (though also easy enough to screw up).

You take your flour w/leaveners, then cut in whatever fat you’re using; butter, lard, bacon grease, shortening, whatever.

Then mix in the liquid. It’s usually milk, or milk products like buttermilk.

From there you very gently work the dough until it’s sticky and can be formed.

If you want flakier biscuits, you roll and fold a bit, getting laminations and then cutting. If you want them soft and fluffy, do nothing but form them into balls by hand. In between, you roll them out to preferred thickness then cut. Cutting can be like in this post, or using a round cutter.

You then place them on a lightly greased pan. If you want softer sides, you place them close enough together to make sure they touch as they rise in the oven. For crusty sides, give them space.

Biscuits, particularly southern style biscuits, are an art form of sorts. The least rigid kind of baking there is imo. There’s a ton of variation in textures and flavor.

• 250 g AP flour
• 1 TBSP sugar
• 1 TBSP baking powder
• Pinch salt
• 6 Tbsp (90 g) butter (cold)
• 2 Tbsp (30 g) butter (melted for topping)
• ~2/3 cup (~150 ml) whole mil

Add flour, sugar, baking powder and salt to bowl. Take your very cold butter, and grate it into the dry ingredients using a box grater. Quickly work the butter into the flour mix with a fork or your hands. Add a portion of the milk, and mix until a shaggy dough forms, adding more milk as necessary (I did not use the full allotment). Turn out onto a work surface dusted with flour. Knead with your hands until you have a solid mass which does not stick to your work surface. Roll it into a rough ball/lump, then flatten it out into a rough rectangle approximately 1 inch thick. Fold one half of the rectangle on top of the other half, and then knead it back out to a 1 thick rectangle. Turn the dough 90 degrees, and repeat a couple times. I think I maybe did 5 reps. Once you have your final rectangle, cut out your biscuit rounds if you have the tool to do so. I did not, so I just cut the rectangle into thirds and then half using a chef’s knife. Lubed a baking pan with cooking spray, hucked the bits of dough in, and set into a 425 degree F (~220 C) oven. Baked until the dough had puffed up at least twice it’s initial size, and the surface was dry and unyielding to my finger (roughly 15, 20 min? I don’t know, tbh, this was all feel at this point). Notably, the biscuits had not acquired much of any color other than their bottoms. I was worried about over cooking them or scorching the bottoms if I let it go until the tops were golden brown, so I brushed them down with butter and then hit em with a full broiler grill fro several minutes, until the coloration seen here was achieved. Reapplied more melted butter, cracked over some fresh salt, and voila.

I sympathize with you entirely. While I know there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for almost every baking mishap (too dry, too wet, too much gluten, not nearly enough, overworked, underworked, and on and on), I can’t help but feel that some loaves are just cursed by fate

Salt! I used salted butter, so I had not added any to the actual dough. My first sample told me I needed a little more salt to balance out the sweet, so I spread a little more melted butter on top and cracked over a bit of salt. Vast improvement!