Light and flaky buttermilk biscuits
Biscuits
I learned this unconventional method from Tom Purtill, a young baker at one of my favorite diners in Oakland. The first time I tasted one of his biscuits, I begged him to come out of the kitchen and talk me through his process. And I’m so glad that I did, because every word he said was completely at odds with everything I knew about making biscuits. I’d always thought the key was to work the dough as little as possible, but he told me how he completely incorporated half of the butter into the dough to make it tender, and then rolled and folded the finished dough a few times to create flaky layers. It was so counter- intuitive, in fact, that if the moistest, flakiest biscuit I’d ever seen weren’t sitting right in front of me, I wouldn’t have believed him. <br />But I did, and went straight home to try it out. I treated every word he’d said like gospel, and it worked! The key, just as he said, is to keep everything ice-cold so that the butter doesn’t melt and combine with the flour to form gluten, which will make the biscuits tough. If you don’t have a stand mixer, you can use a food processor. Or mix everything by hand using a metal pastry cutter—it’ll just take a little while longer. Reprinted with permission from Salt Fat Acid Heat by Samin Nosrat (Simon and Schuster, 2017).
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