Biscuits

Bad weather food is the best kind because it gives one license to indulge. This is how I’ve permitted myself many a baked good, many a cheese-and-bread meal, and many a dairy-showcasing dinner: cheese soufflé, macaroni & cheese, creamed spinach.

Last week a group of us had a Laurie Colwin tribute dinner. Save a cheese plate, we were all charged with bringing one of her dishes, and I decided on biscuits. On Saturday, the day of the Colwin dinner, when it was gorgeous enough outside that I was more inspired to pot herbs, making biscuits felt strange. In my mind—and probably in the late Anglophile Colwin’s mind as well—biscuits are for sitting in the parlor room and looking out on the rain. So I made them, but the entire process seemed contextually insufficient until later in the evening, when they were featured alongside the other Colwin-inspired dishes of baked chicken, creamed spinach with jalapeno and, for dessert, Elizabeth David's flourless chocolate cake.

The following several days brought a rainy, breezy, cloudy, cool front that, compounded by the heat in my apartment having been shut down until next fall, made the idea of baking something quite appealing. Colwin’s enthusiasm for biscuits—and sometimes she does proselytize—largely comes down to their impromptu quality: the ingredients (flour, butter, milk, baking powder [and salt]) should be on hand, the equipment (a bowl, a spoon, a baking sheet) is all probably drying on the dish rack, and the mixing bowl-to-table time is relatively quick for a baked good. She also believes them to be extremely versatile, suggesting the dough as a base for pizza and mini-biscuits as “cocktail nibblers.” Regardless, a warm biscuit right out of the oven is a very comforting thing. So after several minutes of hovering over my preheating oven (it’s hard to recall this now, on the year's first wave of throat-clenching humidity), I gave them another go.

I made one important modification and one not important one. The former is the addition of salt. It’s not until two-thirds of the way through Home Cooking that we get any insight into this maddening omission (it is for the sake of her blood pressure, we discover; however it was also the ‘80s); I overcompensate by sprinkling additional salt on top as garnish. Secondly, I made them whole-wheat. I didn’t do this only because I am usually prone to this kind of thing (what else do you do with oat and rye and spelt and whole-wheat pastry flour once you have them in your possession?). And I halved the recipe, because it is rare that anyone will need more than 10 biscuits. Lastly, I learned—as I have learned countless times in the past—that the oven temperature is important here. If it’s less than 400°, the biscuits won’t rise much.

Biscuits à la Laurie Colwin

3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup whole-wheat pastry flour
1 teaspoon wheat bran
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons cold butter, cubed
3 ounces cold milk (half of 3/4-cup; you can probably eyeball it)
1 tablespoon melted butter
Fleur de sel, or other chunky salt, for garnish (OK: optional)

Preheat the oven to 400°. Whisk or sift together the flours, wheat bran, baking powder, and salt. Cut in the cold butter using either your hands or your fingers. It should be uniformly mealy, so that when you grab a handful of it, it holds its shape. (But as with any pastry where you’re working with cold butter, you don’t want to overwork it; a few larger chunks of butter are better than working the mixture into a paste.) Make a well in the center and pour in the milk, then stir in with a spatula or wooden spoon. It will be kind of sticky. Using your hands or a rolling pin, flatten the mixture out to a thickness of about 3/4 of an inch on a clean surface that’s been lightly dusted with flour. Cut out rounds, then scrape up the remains, flatten them out, and cut out more rounds. Brush the tops with melted butter and then sprinkle with the salt. Bake for 15 minutes, until puffed up and browned on the bottom.