Biscuits

Ingredients

 

• Dry
• 3 cups (15 oz.) all-purpose flour (White Lily All-Purpose)
• 4 tablespoons double-acting baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2-4 tablespoons granulated sugar
• Fat
• 3 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 8 tablespoons butter, frozen, grated
• 3 tablespoons leaf lard
• Wet
• 0.75 cups buttermilk
• 0.75 cup half-and-half

 

Instructions

 

1. Mix Dry ingredients.
2. Cut grated butter and lard into flour by hand, until the texture of cornmeal. 
3. Form a well in flour and pour in buttermilk and half-and-half.
4. With a wide, flexible rubber spatula, gently fold dry ingredient into wet in a circular fashion, knocking the flour mix into the liquid. Stop just as dough comes together in a sticky ball.
5. Flour you rolling surface, and turn out your dough onto it.
6. Dust the surface with a good layer of flour, and pat down.
7. Using a well floured rolling pin, very gently roll your dough out into a rectangle that is at least 5 times as long as it is wide, and 1/2" thick.
8. Very gently wrap your dough into a log, with a swirl shaped cross section.
9. Roll out into a rectangle twice as long as it is wide, no more than 1" thick. Fold in half.
10. Repeat this step 6 more times, leaving a final thickness exactly 1" thick.
11. Prior to the last wrapping, place/spread the room temperature butter on the floured and rolled out dough.
12. Dip a 2.5" biscuit cutter in flour and cut the dough.
13. Mass scraps together, and roll to 1" thick rectangle. Cut these biscuits with a knife to minimize waste.
14. Preheat oven to 425.
15. Place biscuits on an aluminum sheet no more than 1/4" apart, add a thumb print on top of each biscuit, and chill for 30 minutes. (At this point, if you don't immediately want to eat all of the biscuits that you've made, you may put the ones you'd like to save for later into a freezer safe zip-top bag, and leave in the freezer for several weeks.)
16. Bake biscuits for 10 minutes, rotate 180 degrees, then bake for another 10 minutes until golden brown on top (Estimated TOTAL of 20 MIN, but sometimes mine are done quicker.).