Sourdough Biscuits
52 weeks of Baking – Biscuits
I use to think I made great biscuits, then I went to the south and had a real biscuit.
The students on Gulden Leeuw devoured my biscuits. I did have to argue on several occasions with them that they weren’t scones, I even made scones for breakfast several times, must be a Canadian thing. I would make soft drop biscuits with golden brown edges, it was faster to scoop and drop the dough onto a sheet pan than it was to roll them out for 75 portions. It never occurred to me how wrong I was.
On the Oliver Hazard Perry we stopped in Charleston, South Carolina for a few days. I finally got the chance to try real southern biscuits when I went out to brunch. They pulled apart in flakey warm layers with a golden brown crisp shell, I knew right away I couldn’t make drop biscuits again. Drop biscuits have more moisture in them, they are tender, but they don’t flake the same way, just a different thing all together.
These sourdough biscuits use the same method for a roll and cut biscuit, just replace the liquid with sourdough starter and a bit of milk. I enjoy keeping a starter around for bread, pancakes, waffles and such, I hadn’t tried it in biscuits until now and it was great. I didn’t get the same sour fermenty flavor I do with bread, but it added great depth of flavor to the biscuit and didn’t impede the texture. Next time maybe I’ll try making a sponge, like you do with bread, to see if that will give more sour tang.
Sourdough Biscuits
- Yield: 8 biscuits
- Category: Baking
Ingredients
- 2 c flour
- 1 tbsp. sugar
- 2 tsp. baking powder
- 1 tsp. salt
- 1/2 c cold butter, cut into cubes
- 1 c sourdough starter
- 1/4 -1/2 c milk, depending on consistency of your starter
Directions
- Preheat the oven to 425F.
- Mix all the dry ingredients together and cut in the cold butter, leave it a little bigger than you might usually do it.
- Add the sourdough starter and give it a rough stir, use your fingers to really work the starter in, add small amounts of milk until the dough comes together.
- Turn out onto a clean counter and push together into a rectangle, cut in half and put one piece on top of the other. Roll out into a rectangle about 1 inch thick.
- Cut into 8 squares and place on an ungreased baking sheet.
- Bake at 425F for 20 minutes until the bottoms are golden and the top edges are just starting to get color.
