Herbed buttermilk biscuits

Since the herbs are a fairly subtle flavor in these, they could work either along side eggs for breakfast or with soup and salad for supper.

Herbed buttermilk biscuits

From Fine Cooking, March 2003

Ingredients

2 cups flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

¾ teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon baking soda

2 tablespoons chopped fresh dill

2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley

3 tablespoons shortening or lard, chilled

2 tablespoons chilled butter

¾ cup plus 2 tablespoons buttermilk

Method

Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment.

Whisk together flour, baking powder, salt and soda. Stir in dill and parsley. Cut lard and butter into small chunks and cut into flour mixture using a pastry blender until mixture resembles coarse meal. Make a well in the center and add buttermilk. Mix just until combined.

Turn the sticky mixture out onto a lightly floured board. A bowl scraper helps with this. With lightly floured hands, form dough into a flattened round and then fold it over on itself about six times. (You're building up layers here.) Pat it out again into an even thickness about ½-inch thick. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate 20 minutes.

Remove cutting board from refrigerator. Cut the dough into desired shapes with a cutter or just into squares or triangles as you prefer. Makes 8 to 12 depending on the size you choose. (I prefer to cut mine out without a cutter to avoid rerolling, since it’s both tedious and detrimental to the texture.)

Place on parchment lined sheet about 2 inches apart. Bake about 9 to 12 minutes, depending on biscuit size, until raised and golden brown.

Rating: Tasty carriers for butter. Nice texture. The herbs are pretty subtle. Actually fairly fast to fix on a weeknight once you make yourself start, the hardest part to everything in life.