Wandering Adventure Party

I’ve always liked to cook, but I’ve never really delved into baking. It always seemed so fussy. However, as they say, the first step in being kinda good at something is being really bad at it, so I decided I should try anyway. All said, pretty pleased with the result, especially the evidence of laminated layers.

I’ve mentioned this elsewhere, but it’s a drum worth beating; if you live somewhere with a public library, there is a very good chance that they have a collection of cookbooks that are available to check out for free. Alternatively, no one has ever batted an eye at me making copies of the specific recipes I want to try right there at the library. I have to pay $0.10 a copy, but it’s worth it. Especially since I know how I cook, and this keeps the library’s books out of harm’s way. My local library has stuff ranging from the latest James Beard winners, to tried and true standbys like The Joy of Cooking, as well as stuff with a local focus (either ingredients, or historical).

• 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.

all fried potatoes have a place in my heart (lodged into the arterial walls, secured with cholesterol glue), but I’ll always insist that hashbrowns are shredded potatoes, not cubed. don’t get me wrong, I’d happily house this entire bowl and ask you for seconds, but these are what I usually picture.

did you hand cut the potatoes? they’re very neatly done. I’m useless at consistency when it comes to anything smaller than 1 cm dice.

I hear you. I’m blessed with more choices for potato ingestion than I need or deserve in the supermarket aisle. a benefit of living in middle-America, I suppose. I’ve heard that you can approximate them by squeezing as much moisture as possible out of grated potato using a cheesecloth or tea towel, and then freezing the shreds before frying them off in a pan, but that degree of foresight and prep work doesn’t factor into most of my breakfasts lol.

::: spoiler spoiler

• 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.

::: here is the process that i used this morning. the other posters are correct that American biscuits are apparently quite different than what biscuits are elsewhere. as someone else shared with you, I’ve often heard that the closest European equivalent would be a butter scone, but I’ve also heard folks who care more than I about these things that that’s also not exactly 1:1. in any case, it’s a very lightly sweet and buttery quickbread. it has a crispy exterior, and a very soft, tender crumb interior, sometimes with distinct, laminated layers (similar in principle to a croissant). it is equally at home in both savory and sweet applications. this morning, I ate them with elderberry jam, while I served them as a side for beef stew this evening. I used it to sop up the remnants in my bowl. equally delicious.

This post must have caught my brain in mid hiccup, because I was trying to parse if these were supposed to be vegetarian burgers made of squash, or if this was a language difference and you were translating “smash burger”. Took longer than I’d like to admit to reorient myself lol.

How did you prepare your squash? A neighbor’s zucchini are starting to come in, and they always share some with me, but I’ve never found a cooking method I’m super satisfied with. Grilling works well, but I don’t have that capability currently.

It’s not.

The other reply is correct that I used a knife to cut my final rectangle of a dough into 6 pieces. Like I said, I very rarely bake, so I don’t actually own any biscuit cutters. Plus, part of the exercise today was to get me to let go of the block if have in my head about baking being fussy, so this was a (somewhat) intentional rustic approach to the dish. After cutting the dough into individual pieces, they all fit into the bottom of that square pan, with a couple centimeters to spare between most of them. I figured that if they expanded against one another, that would actually help push the rise further vertically, so I wasn’t bothered by merging if it occurred. However, it turned out that the majority grew straight up rather than out, and most of them were fully freestanding when done baking.

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

Indeed! I felt like a mad man when I was dusting my counter down with flour, but thankfully I was able to do so right next to my sink, so cleanup was just pushing the leftover cruft into the sink and giving a quick wipe down. Still, definitely not a breakfast fit for a workday, that’s for sure.

Liberally, and frequently!

you’re very welcome! I posted the full recipe a couple of times elsewhere in the thread, and I can recommend it if you’ve got an hour and want to try something different for breakfast. easy enough that a total novice was able to get good results!

100%

I definitely have some ideas for some variations with cheese and herbs that I think will go great with some sort of chicken dish.

Thank you! The broiler did most of the work at the end there.

since you brought red-eye gravy up, are your familiar with its preparation? I’ve read that it’s often made by frying up a ham steak with maybe a little supplementary fat (butter, lard, or bacon grease) and creating a roux from the drippings. rather than milk, as might be done with sawmill/country gravy, the liquid added is strong black coffee.

this combination of ham, coffee, and roux has long fascinated me, as I imagine a real roller coaster of flavors there. however, I’ve not had the opportunity to order it in a real Southern diner, so I don’t know if I’m off-base here, especially because, as I think about it, I’m pretty sure the first time I came across the dish as a concept was in an alternate-history novel in which racist South Africans time travel to the American Civil War and hand out AK-47s to the Army of Northern Virginia. In other words, citation very much needed lol.