Breads, Biscuits, and Dumplings, Oh My!

***UPDATE***

I tweaked the recipe even more, so now I think it’s pretty much mine. Therefore, I’m going to share the recipe I used here.

2 cups Better Batter All-Purpose Flour, sifted
1 cup milk (add 1 tsp vinegar to cup before pouring milk in)

1 scant tablespoon baking powder
1 slightly heaping 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 scant teaspoon unprocessed Celtic sea salt
1 stick cold butter, cut in small pieces

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

Sift flour into mixing bowl, add baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Stir gently to mix. Add cold butter pieces and use pastry cutter or hands to mix it in so it resembles coarse, pea size pieces. Add enough of the milk until it’s a soft (but not too soft) dough.

I put the dough on a very lightly floured, grease-resistant paper plate and patted it out to about an inch thick. Use a metal biscuit cutter and cut out with a straight up/down motion (don’t twist it). Put on greased baking pan. Lightly squeeze remaining dough together and repeat until all the dough us used up. Bake for 14-15 minutes, or until golden.

I’m not kidding…these are terrific. Even with just butter. It’s a pain in the neck to make from scratch, but totally worth it. I may make another batch tomorrow, but freeze the unbaked biscuits to see how that works.

~~~

One of the biggest challenges I’ve faced since I had to cut gluten out of my life is – as you can see by the subject line – finding breads, biscuits, and dumplings that taste close to the real things.

The whole bread thing continues to disappoint, but I’ll keep looking until I find something that works. Hopefully in the near future, I’ll be trying a new recipe. If it works out, I’ll post it here.

I think I’ve already mentioned that Pamela’s Baking Mix makes wonderful dumplings … as long as you keep them fairly small. Maybe the size of a Clementine or tangerine. They look different, but the flavor and texture are almost identical to my former favorite.

And now…

Now I’ve found the perfect biscuit. Maybe not perfect because I didn’t follow the recipe quite as much as I should have. I tend to be an ‘eyeballer’ (as in ‘that looks about right’), so the measurements weren’t exactly exact. But then they weren’t when I was making biscuits with wheat-based flour either.

My only complaint is the baking powder taste was a little stronger than I prefer, but I had the same complaint with ‘real’ biscuit recipes, too. So I’ll cut back on the baking powder a bit for the next batch, and they’ll be perfect for me. My son liked them the way they turned out this time.

So now we move to why I liked them so much. One, they look like real biscuits, both fresh out of the oven and split open with a knife. Two, the feel like real biscuits. I’m not kidding – the texture is identical. No grit, no funky, rubbery eggy ick going on because I didn’t use eggs in the recipe (yay!).

I’m not going to give you the recipe here. Yes, I made it a little differently, but Jeanne over at the Art of Gluten-Free Baking deserves 100% credit for this baby. Just click on the link and it will take you directly there.

What changes did I make?

Since it’s hard to find all of the different flours in her all-purpose flour mix locally, I used the Better Batter gluten-free flour I already had on hand.

The next change was that I used unprocessed Celtic sea salt, and since I’m fairly sure it’s a finer grind than the kosher, I cut it from three-quarters of a teaspoon to a half teaspoon … and I’ll probably make it a scant half teaspoon next time.

Next on the list was the buttermilk. I hate buying buttermilk. I don’t like looking at it, and the smell makes me want to hurl, so I poured a teaspoonful of Bragg Organic Vinegar (apple cider) in the cup, then filled it up with milk and let it sit for five minutes.

And finally, I used all butter because I won’t use shortening, and I don’t know what leaf lard is. I also used a little extra Better Batter to pat the dough out instead of tapioca flour.

What do you think?

Kristy K. James- GF biscuitsI’ll admit they’re not beautiful. I didn’t put forth my best effort. In my defense, so many recipes have turned out bad that until I knew for sure … well, this is what I wound up with. Fortunately they still tasted great! And now I don’t have to track down a bunch of different kinds of flour. Better Batter works great!

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4 Responses to Breads, Biscuits, and Dumplings, Oh My!

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  3. Hooray! This is cause for celebration. 🙂

    • Kristy K. James says:

      Yes it is! And I’ll be celebrating with another small batch to go with my chicken this afternoon. 😀

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