Печива - tips & tricks

Remember never to scoop flour with your measuring cup. Spoon flour into your measuring cup, then level it off with a knife.

Съвети за идеални Biscuits

• Make sure your baking powder, baking soda, and/or self-rising flour are fresh! (see note at end of post)
• Start preheating the oven as soon as you start thinking about making the biscuits! You want the oven to be completely preheated before the biscuits go in.
• Prepare your ingredients and tools in advance so that once you get started, you can work quickly and efficiently: cut your butter in small pieces and put it back in the fridge, measure out the buttermilk, flour the counter, get out the biscuit cutter and baking sheet.
• Use very cold butter, keep it in the fridge until you’re ready for it. Work the butter quickly into the flour so that it doesn’t have a chance to even think about melting!
• When you add the buttermilk, stir lightly! This can be done simply with a fork. You just want to get the dough to a point where the flour is all clumped together, not a smooth dough!
• Knead lightly and minimally. You aren’t kneading this like bread dough, you are simply finishing the mixing process with your hands. You only want to knead a couple of times to finish dispersing the liquid through the dough. The more you knead, the denser your biscuits will be!
• Even if you use self-rising flour in the dough, dust the counter and dough with all-purpose flour. Self-rising flour can give the outside of the biscuits a bitter taste, due to the leavening it contains.
• Don’t pat the dough out too thin. If you want high biscuits, don’t roll the dough any thinner than 3/4 – 1 inch.
• When cutting biscuits, use a sharp cutter and press straight down and up. Don’t twist! This was the hardest tip for me to adapt. I have always twisted the biscuit cutter. But guess what, it makes a difference!
• Place cut biscuits together on the baking sheet so that they are touching. Again, this is something I have never done. But I found that the biscuits do rise well and I really enjoy the texture of the soft-sided biscuits!
• Don’t re-roll the scraps. Since it is best to work the dough as little as possible, instead of gathering the scraps, re-rolling and cutting into biscuits, just form the scraps into biscuit shapes by hand. I usually end up with scraps to form two extra biscuits. They might look a little funny, but they rise as well as the others and they taste just as good!