Page 274 - Turkey Book from Meathead

show you how to get them soft and fluy inside and crispy on the outside.
We are obsessed with biscuits. We have tried every recipe under the sun. Biscuits are so wonderfully versatile, and surprisingly, they are easy and forgiving. And they can even be baked on a grill with indirect heat! Either way, biscuits are best when served hot right out of the oven/grill.
Biscuits are a rustic bread, leavened by chemistry not by fermentation. There are many recipes out there with countless variations on the ingredients and techniques, and not surprisingly, controversy and nonsense abound over how to make them. Should you use cake flour? All purpose flour? Both? Butter? Lard? Shortening? Bacon fat? Buttermilk? Whole milk? Yogurt? Should they be flaky or fluy? Can you use a food processor or must you use your hands only? Can you use a rolling pin or your hands only? Knead or not knead? Fold the dough or not? Chill before cutting? We’ve tried most of these options and discovered the dierences are minor. These biscuits are special in that they are really easy to make and get nice and crisp on the top and bottom, yet the center remains soft and fluy.
Biscuits come in dierent shapes: Drop biscuits are amorphous blobs usually made from very wet dough. Formed biscuits are cut into rounds, squares, and wedge shapes. I find square cuts easiest to make and eat, and the architecture makes sense from a quality standpoint. Round biscuit cutters squash the dough and you want poofy high dough for flakiness. And round biscuits leave you with cutouts after you cut them. Those cutouts have to be reformed and cut and