Tag: whole wheat

Whole Wheat Buttermilk Biscuits

Having been taught how to make baking powder biscuits by my sister Patsy, I soon started thinking about the wonderful whole wheat baking powder biscuits that our friend Toni made. Toni had a little hand-powered mill that she used to grind her own whole wheat flour. The freshly ground wheat berries gave a wonderful nutty flavor to the biscuits.

I don’t have a flour mill or Toni’s recipe, but these biscuits have  that nutty flavor anyway. The whole wheat, butter, sugar and buttermilk work together to produce biscuits that are light, fluffy and tasty.

They are great with sausage gravy or eggs for breakfast or with soup for lunch or dinner, and they are just sweet enough to make you want to pop one in the microwave for a few seconds, spread it with butter and gobble the little morsel before you go to bed.

Here’s how to make them.

INGREDIENTS:

2 cups whole-wheat flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1 T sugar
½ tsp. salt
¼ cup butter
3/4 – 1 cup buttermilk

PROCEDURE:

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.

Thoroughly mix the flour with the baking powder, soda, sugar and salt in a mixing bowl. Cut the butter into half inch pieces and blend it with a fork or pastry blender into the dry ingredients until the mixture resembles coarse corn meal.

Stir the buttermilk with a fork into the dry ingredients, adding more buttermilk if necessary to moisten the flour. The dough should be moist but not wet.

Turn the dough onto a floured surface and turn it with a spatula to coat the outside lightly with flour. Flour your hands and knead the dough 12 to 15 times, then pat it out until it is about ½ inch thick. Cut the dough into rounds with a biscuit cutter or a floured drinking glass. Knead and pat the trimmings lightly and cut more rounds.

Place the biscuits on an ungreased baking sheet and bake them for 10 to 12 minutes.

NOTE:  As with regular baking powder biscuits, do not knead the dough more than just enough to get it to pat out on the counter or breadboard.  Kneading too much makes for tough heavy biscuits.

From Ireland: Myrtle Allen’s Brown Bread

St. Patrick’s Day is almost here, and one old man’s fancy turns to thoughts of bread. Not Irish soda bread but a wonderful moist yeast bread from Ireland that you don’t knead. The recipe below is a variation of the one in Beard on Bread, one of my favorite cookbooks. In it James Beard describes how he found the recipe at Myrtle Allen’s inn, Ballymaloe House, in Ireland. If you like a firm bread that is wonderful with butter and cheese, give this one a try.

INGREDIENTS:

3 3/4 cups whole-wheat flour
1/4 tsp. white sugar
2 1/4 tsp. active dry yeast
2 cups warm water (100 to 115º)
2 T dark molasses, dark corn syrup, sorghum or honey
2 tsp. salt

PROCEDURE:

Put the flour and salt in an ovenproof mixing bowl and place in a warm oven with the oven thermostat at its lowest setting. Leave it in the oven about 10 minutes. The flour and bowl should be warm when you mix the dough.

Take one-half cup warm water, add one-fourth teaspoon sugar and stir in the yeast. Allow to proof. Dissolve the molasses (or honey or syrup) in the remaining one and a half cups water. When the flour feels warm to your fingers, remove the bowl from the oven. Stir the yeast mixture into the molasses water and pour the liquid into the flour.

Stir with a wooden spoon until you have a sticky dough, almost like a very stiff batter. At times of low humidity you may need a little more liquid. If so, add water. If the dough seems too thin, add a tablespoon or two of flour and stir in well. Since you do not knead this dough, I have found that stirring it well for a minute or so gives a better texture.

Put the dough into a buttered nine by five by three-inch bread pan. Tap the pan on the counter to remove any air bubbles and smooth the top. As soon as you have put the dough into the pan, preheat your oven to 425º. Allow the dough to rise uncovered in a warm draft free place until it is even with the top of the pan.

Bake the bread for thirty-five to forty-five minutes or until the crust is nicely browned and the loaf sounds hollow when tapped. Remove the bread from the pan and leave it in the turned-off oven for a few minutes to make the crust crisp. Put the bread on a rack to cool. Brush the top and sides with a little butter while the loaf is still hot.

NOTES: Substituting honey, sorghum or corn syrup for the molasses changes the flavor of the bread so much that you might call it a new recipe. All four work well. I have used ordinary clover honey and a dark prairie honey, which has a lot of flavor, and both make excellent bread.

A friend introduced me to sorghum, and I very much like the flavor of the bread made with this syrup. Today sorghum is produced in relatively small quantities by farmers in Kansas, Missouri, Tennessee, North Carolina and other states in the southern part of the U.S. You can find it in many larger supermarkets and organic food stores.

Once you put the batter in the pan, the dough will rise quickly, so watch it carefully. If it rises over the top of the pan, the loaf will fall during baking but it will taste fine.