Cooking well takes time, so whenever I can find a recipe that has multiple uses, I’m more likely to give it a try. A flaky buttermilk biscuit doesn’t take long to make, and when you add cooked bacon before baking, you’re creating a lovely and substantial breakfast biscuit while leaving yourself the option of bacon, lettuce, and tomato biscuits for a light lunch later. Made in smaller sizes, the BLT biscuits are perfect summer hors d’oeuvres, because who doesn’t love a crunchy BLT in a bite? The biscuit dough is so rich that you don’t need to butter them, especially when there’s all that bacon flavor to appreciate.
One baking note: if you still bake by volume rather than weight – meaning you measure ingredients out by the half cup or cup – I wish you’d take a look at measuring ingredients by weight instead. It really does make a difference in the texture of piecrusts, cakes, and, well, just about everything. Baking is best when it’s treated as an exact process – something I’ve been stubbornly refusing to do since forever – but now that I’m cooking so much more, I see that exact proportions carried out as the instructions suggest really do yield better results. It’s just hard for people like me who are going through life in a big hurry, but I admit (grudgingly) that weighing the ingredients is worth it. More and more recipes list their ingredients in ounces for just this reason.
If you want to buy a kitchen scale, any basic version like this will work: http://www.amazon.com/AmazonBasics-Digital-Kitchen-Scale-Display/dp/B00V5IM5PY/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1462722166&sr=8-8&keywords=kitchen+scale
Bacon Buttermilk Biscuits
Serves: Makes 8-10 biscuits
Prep time: 35 minutes
Ingredients
- 2 cups (10 ounces) flour
- 8 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut in pea-sized pieces
- 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
- ½ cup buttermilk
- ½ cup plain yogurt
- 1 tablespoon baking powder
- ¼ teaspoon baking soda
- ½ teaspoon salt (NOTE: if you are making the biscuits without bacon, use 1 ½ teaspoons of salt.)
- ½ pound bacon, cooked until very crispy, drained, and broken into small pieces
For BLT biscuits:
Ingredients
- 1 cup romaine, washed and drained
- 2 tablespoons vegenaise or mayonnaise
- 2 medium tomatoes, sliced
Directions
- Preheat oven to 425 degrees and place oven rack in center of oven.
- Cook bacon until very crisp, drain and set aside.
- Mix together yogurt and buttermilk and set aside.
- In a food processor, mix flour, baking soda, salt and baking powder for several seconds before adding the butter.
- Pulse until mixture is course and large pieces of butter have disappeared.
- Move mixture to a large bowl and add buttermilk and yogurt.
- Mix until dough just begins to come together and turn out onto a floured surface.
- Roll dough into a rectangle or square and use a pastry cutter to fold the dough in on itself in thirds. (This is what creates the layers of flakiness.) Turn dough and roll out again.
- Sprinkle bacon bits across top of dough and repeat the process of folding dough into thirds.
- Cut biscuits into squares with a knife or use a cutter to make round biscuits.
- If you use a cutter, try not to twist the cutter as you press down into the dough – it will push the layers together and make them less flaky.
- Place biscuits upside down on a parchment-covered baking sheet and brush with the melted butter.
- Bake for 15 minutes, or until tops of biscuits are browned.
- Can be served with jam, or made into little bacon, lettuce, and tomato biscuits.
- To make a BLT biscuit, split bacon biscuit in half and spread with vegenaise or mayonnaise.
- Top with lettuce and tomato, replace top of biscuit and serve.
