Biscuit Trials

I have several recipes for biscuits, also called "scones", that I have used and perfected over the years. Three main ones stand out. They are the sour cream, the sourdough and the buttermilk biscuits. All three get rave reviews. All three are light, flaky and delicious! Recipes for all three biscuits and the sourdough starter are below.

I have decided to bake all three and see which one we like the best. The sour cream biscuits are the most expensive to make and I don't always have sour cream for them, the buttermilk biscuits are a LOT of work and I don't always have buttermilk. I'm thinking I might stick with the sourdough biscuits for most of my baking. 

To this end, I have made some sourdough starter. It will be kept in the fridge and fed after use. I might also use it for bread and other sourdough baking. For most of my adult life, I have kept sourdough in the fridge and made mostly sourdough biscuits. I quit doing that about 10 years ago and started making the sour cream biscuits instead. We love the sour cream biscuits and they are delicious, but I don't always have sour cream and its expensive. 

*A note about sour cream and buttermilk. I make my own buttermilk. Since I use cultured buttermilk from the store as starter, its exactly the same. It makes at room temperature, easy! Read my earlier post about making your own buttermilk. Sour cream is made with the same bacteria in cream, rather than milk, so I have looked into making sour cream myself, as well.  After checking out the price of full fat cream, I found that buying sour cream is cheaper than making it from cream at home. Go figure...so...I just buy it, but it is still expensive. 

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You can find the sourdough starter recipe and the sourdough biscuit recipe, in my post "Sourdough"  The sour cream and buttermilk biscuit recipes are below.

Another thing to NOTE from my current experience with biscuits: I prefer using a glass pan. If using a glass pan, turn the heat down 25 degrees, i.e. from 375 to 350. In a glass pan, the bottom of the biscuits are no darker than the top. 

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SOUR CREAM BISCUITS

Ingredients: 

2 cups flour - 2 teaspoon baking powder - 1/3 cup sugar - 1/4 teaspoon salt - 1/4 cream of tarter (optional) - 1/2 cup shortening/lard - 1/2 cup sour cream - 1/2 cup milk

Preheat oven to 425F. Sift all dry ingredients together in a large bowl. Cut in lard with pastry blender until well mixed. Mix all other ingredients together in a separate bowl. Pour into the dry mix and gently fold together just until well blended. Turn out onto a floured surface. Gently shape into a rectangle with floured hands. Cut into squares with a floured knife. Place onto a lightly greased pan or use parchment paper. Bake in a preheated oven at 425F for 15 minutes. 

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BUTTERMILK BISCUITS

Ingredients: 

1/2 cup butter - 2 1/2 cups all purpose flour - 1 1/4 teaspoon salt - 3 3/4 teaspoon baking powder - 1 cup cold buttermilk

Directions:

Freeze butter and grate using largest holes. Add dry ingredients together, mix and add grated butter and blend. Refrigerate 10 minutes. Preheat oven to 475F. Add buttermilk. Stir 15 times. Turn out on a floured surface. Roll out into a 1/4" thick rectangle. Fold in half and roll out again into a 1/4" rectangle. Repeat the fold and roll directions three more times. Cut ending rectangle into squares with a knife. Place biscuits onto an ungreased pan or use parchment paper. Bake at 475F or 15 minutes. 

Starting & Using Sourdough

We like sourdough biscuits, so I keep sourdough in my fridge all the time. I also plan to make sourdough bread, but that has been my plan for a couple of decades and I haven't gotten to it yet...but I'm determined to get to it this month...or maybe next month... 

Sourdough is not really "sour", it a fermentation of regular bread yeast in flour and water with a little sugar to feed the yeast. This wet and growing yeast is kept in the fridge and added to anything that needs rising or flavour. I like to add it to pancakes, even ones made from a mix in a box. (I often make them from scratch and they are fabulous, especially  with sourdough added!)

After using the sourdough, it has to be fed and left to sit out overnight until bubbly again. It is then kept in the refrigerator, as before. 

The metal lid on my jar, in the above photo, has a rubber coating inside and a seal. I would not recommend keeping it in anything with metal in contact with the sourdough. Its quite acidic. 

Sourdough can be frozen for about three months and still be good for drinking. It can be kept longer for cooking but will start to separate after the three months. 

I freeze it in ice cube trays and then put the cubes in a labelled freezer bag. I do this with a lot of things. 

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SOURDOUGH STARTER RECIPE

Ingredients: 

1 cup milk - 1 cup hot water - 1 tablespoon sugar - 2.5 cups flour all-purpose - 2 1/4 teaspoon dry yeast

Directions: 

Mix the milk, hot water and sugar together in a large bowl. When it is cool enough, (around 90-100 degrees F) add the yeast and flour. Stir well and let it sit until bubbly. Make sure the bowl is big enough, as it will rise a lot when it starts to ferment. Cover lightly with a towel and let sit 24 hours. Put into a container that is big enough to hold it when it rises and has a lid. Once it has risen and bubbled, keep refrigerated. Feed after using and let sit out until bubbly. 

To feed after using: Add 1 cup flour, 1 cup water and 1/4 cup sugar. Stir well and let sit until bubbly. NOTE: This is strictly for biscuits. If you want to make sourdough bread, put a little starter in another jar and feed with just equal amounts of flour and water only. No sugar and water instead of milk, unless milk bread is your goal. I keep two sourdough jars, one for each item, and well labelled. 

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SOURDOUGH BISCUITS

Ingredients:

½ teaspoon salt - 1 cup flour all purpose - 2 teaspoons baking powder - ¼ teaspoon soda - 1/3 cup shortening - 1 cup sourdough

Directions: 

Preheat oven to 275F. Mix all dry ingredients together in a large bowl. Cut in the shortening with a pastry blender. Stir in the sourdough. Gently squeeze together until fairly well mixed with floured hands. Turn out onto a floured surface and gently shape into a rectangle with hands. Cut into squares with a knife that is dipped regularly into flour. This dough is sticky inside. Place on pan with parchment paper or lightly greased pan. These are best if made small and kept tall and can be reshaped after cutting and placing on pan. They will spread slightly. If possible, let rise some before baking. 

Bake in a preheated oven at 375F for 15-20 mins. 

Tortiere

 

Tortiere! Its a favourite dish at our house.  Its the traditional French Canadian Christmas Eve fare but is  good anytime, especially on a cold winter's night. It's a meat pie, spiced with nutmeg and onion and its delicious! We make ours with pork, which is the usual recipe in Quebec, from which this dish comes. We prefer the juicy tenderness of pork, but I have made it with medium ground beef before.  

Here is our recipe. I got it from my mother in law and its the best I have ever eaten, much like most of the other food she makes.

Tortiere:

Ingredients:  Top and bottom pastry for one pie

2 lbs of ground pork or a pork/beef blend

1/2 a large sweet onion

1 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon pepper

1/2 teaspoon nutmeg

Dash of mace

Tablespoon of beef bouillon

Directions: Mix all together in a pot on the stove and cook until the onion is tender. The meat should be fully cooked but tender. Add 1.5 tablespoons of cornstarch. Pour into a pie crust, put top crust on and bake at 350F until the pastry is nicely brown, about an hour. Let sit for about 20 mins until cool enough to cut and eat. May also be thickened with potato flakes instead of corn starch. Serve hot with vegetables and potatoes. 

Banana Wine

This week I am making banana wine. I have made many various types of wine from all kinds of things edible, but this is a first for the banana. 

I am making five gallons of wine, so needed a lot of bananas. They were, of course, green when I bought them, so I had to leave them sitting out at room temperature for a week or so, until they were very ripe. They needed the brown spots on the peel, but no rotten areas. I bought regular bananas so didn't use the peel from those. Non-organic bananas are sprayed with all kinds of things, since people don't eat the peel. I also bought a few large bunches of organic bananas so I could add the peel, as well. I peeled and chopped all the bananas yesterday. 

I recently bought a 40 pint pot with lid, for making wine as well as soup, etc. I filled it half full of water and started to heat it on the stove, before I began to process the bananas. As I peeled and chopped the bunches of bananas, I added them to the pot. I eventually brought all the bananas to a boil in the pot. They boiled for about 10 mins, then I turned off the heat and let it cool. After it cooled some, I used a strainer and scooped out all the banana pieces and mashed them to leave most of the juice/water in the pot. I'll need all of that to make wine. The cut, boiled and mashed bananas went into the garbage. If it were summer, I would compost this, if not for bears. Composting is not recommended here in Fort Nelson, because it draws bears. 

It's important to note here that everything has to be sterilized. The strainer, spoon(s), etc. pot, primary fermenter, thermometer, hydrometer...everything! 

After boiling the bananas for about 10 mins, I used a sterilized strainer and poured the pre-wine liquid (also called "must) into the primary fermenter, previously sterilized. Its basically just an extra large food grade plastic container. It doesn't need a lid and if it has one, its not recommended to seal it closed. The day before I had sterilized the primary fermenter and half filled it with water so the chlorine would evaporate. I poured the very hot must from boiling the bananas directly into the primary fermenter. With the room temperature water already in there, it wasn't too hot for it. 

The acid blend and pectic enzyme were added immediately and stirred well. The fermenter was partially covered to keep out the dust, etc until the liquid is cool enough to put in the wine yeast. If its too hot, it will kill the yeast. Room temperature or slightly warmer is fine. It makes for weeks at room temperature. 

While waiting for the must to cool, I added the sugar. With a hydrometer floating in the must, I added sugar, stirring constantly, until the reading on the hydrometer reached 8% while floating in the must. I'm making light wine with 8% alcohol. The must was stirred for awhile to dissolve the sugar. 

When the must was cool enough, I added a package of wine yeast. I like to use Lalvin E-1118. Its what I have used for decades and I like the taste. I have rarely had it fail. I sprinkled it on top of the liquid and gave it a light stir. Then the lid was put on but left slightly ajar. I have used this yeast to make wine sitting at 17% alcohol. To get much higher than that, you need a different yeast. The alcohol starts to kill off the Lalvin E-1118 yeast at around 17-18%. You can buy yeast for making whiskey that can get you around 21-22% alcohol under ideal conditions, but to get any higher than that, it has to be distilled or fortified. 

When the yeast get going, its vigorous enough for the first few days, to emit enough CO2 to prevent any bacteria from entering the must. Its also too vigorous for an air lock, so needs some space for the gas to escape. When the yeast is working, it creates a lot of foam on the top and has a clean yeasty smell.

After about 4 days, it will be slow enough to need an air lock to keep out the air but still let the gas escape. Then it gets racked into the secondary fermenter with a stopper (bung) housing an air lock. Both are sterilized and well rinsed before using. 

I did this today. This is what it looks like now. There are CO2 bubbles escaping constantly. It will continue to sit in this secondary fermenter with an air lock, until no more bubble escape. Then I will put in the hydrometer and see where the sugar level is at that time. When the sugar level reaches zero or even .999 (slightly less than zero), it will be finished. It can then be cleared, if not clear already, and bottled. I will rack (siphon) it into a glass secondary fermenter carbuoy to clear it before bottling. 

This is something different for me, since I have never made banana wine before. I got a taste of the new wine today, when siphoning it into the secondary fermenter. I think we are going to like this banana wine! Wines I have previous made are: one gallon of lilac, maple, dandelion, chocolate mint, mint, apple, sugar snap pea pod, and a few others I can't remember; five gallons of: rose petal, a favourite, x 2 (made twice), rhubarb x 2, crab apple, cherry, wild blueberry, apple, wild grape, ground cherries, strawberry, raspberry, wild field berry ( a wild black/red raspberry and blackberry mix), 

Update Jan 22: 

The banana wine has finished fermenting! I racked it into the clear glass secondary fermenter for clearing! Next up: time to bottle!