I really screwed up while making buttermilk biscuits this evening. Every recipe tells you to mix the dry ingredients (in this case, whole wheat pastry flour, salt, baking soda, baking powder) and cut in butter BEFORE adding liquids.
With quick breads (muffins, banana bread, biscuits), the batter or dough starts rising the instant wet ingredients hit the dry ingredients. Don’t answer the phone before hustling it into the oven.
With my mind out to lunch, I blithely dumped buttermilk/ yogurt into the dry ingredients. “This doesn’t look right,” I thought.
Horrors! I forgot the butter! Throw it away and start over? I’ll try something….
Working quickly, I chopped cold butter into small pieces and lightly mixed the dough. Gently kneaded for one minute, smashing larger pieces of butter with my fingers as I folded and kneaded the dough.
Surprisingly, the biscuits were delicious, tender and light. See the layers?
I hate to rub in fats (butter or in my case stick Earth Balance) in the flour mixture. I have learned to melt the fats first and then mix it with the flour and let it cool before adding the rest. it works great and no messy fingers.
I don’t bake. Try to limit carbs, so I don’t keep cookies, cake, pies or other baked goods in the house. If I get desperate I will get something when I eat out. But even then, it’s rare.
Nice save! I can barely cook let alone figure out how to save anything...they look good!
The proof is in the pudding. The point of breaking up cold butter into dry ingredients is to evenly distribute tiny bits of the butter that will boil off there moisture in the baking and produce bubbles that make the pastry light and fluffy. Your fix got you the same result. You just got there the hard way. Nicely done!