I have read about Joanne Chang in blogs and magazines for years, watched her beat Bobby Flay in a sticky bun throwdown , drooled over both of her cookbooks at the library, but for reasons I can’t explain had never made any of her recipes until a few days ago.
Joanne Chang’s Buttermilk Biscuits
The recipe for buttermilk biscuits with maple and black pepper featured below, is in Dana Cowin’s new cookbook, Mastering My Mistakes in the Kitchen. Many of you likely know Dana as the Editor in Chief of Food and Wine magazine, as someone who knows food better than anyone, as someone who wouldn’t make too many mistakes in the kitchen, or who would be an unlikely person to admit to them.
What follows in the book are recipes with advice and tips from 65 professional chefs, including Jean-Georges Vongerichten, Jose Andres, April Bloomfield, David Chang, and Thomas Keller who offers a three-step, foolproof recipe for roast chicken.
Despite the presence and importance of these chefs in the book, however, the recipes are not cheffy at all: think meatballs (and how to make them light and tender), potstickers (and how to make them not only brown but also crisp), great ribs (and a no-fuss way to make them).
Of the 20 recipes I have bookmarked, top picks include halibut cooked in red coconut curry, baked ziti Arrabbiata, Korean meat loaf (made with a whole cup of gochujang chile paste), and braised chicken with leeks.
How to make Better Biscuits
I have made many a biscuit over the years, but until making this recipe, never have I folded the dough over itself four times before cutting it, a step that helps create beautiful layers in the finished biscuits, and never have I chilled the cut biscuits for an hour before baking, a step that helps make the biscuits flakier. This recipe is appended with 10 tips from Joanne ranging from how best to incorporate baking soda (I never would have imagined this to be an issue) to the role sugar plays in baking not only for sweetness but also for texture (also news to me).
- Folding the dough four times truly creates incredible flakiness. These biscuits are the lightest, flakiest, best biscuits I’ve ever made.
- For a taller biscuit, roll the dough to a thickness of 1-inch.
- Maple syrup + Maldon sea salt make for an irresistible salty-sweet top.
- Bake on the highest rack for beautifully golden biscuits in 15 minutes. (Every oven is different, however, so watch closely and adjust accordingly)
- For no-waste (trimmings/scraps) biscuits, cut the dough into squares as opposed to circles.
If you live in the area, this is the best buttermilk. Argyle Cheese Farmer also makes the best yogurt . The Niskayuna Co-op carries both:
The four-fold shaping process:
I find that a one-inch thick dough creates the size biscuit I like best
Square biscuit made from the scraps:
hhb
Description
Source Dana Cowin’s Mastering My Mistakes in the Kitchen .
Update November 2021: I recently upped the amount of salt here. It had previously been 1 teaspoon (6 grams). I think these biscuits need the updated amount (reflected in the ingredient list below), but if you’ve made these in the past and have been satisfied with the result, you can stick to the 1 teaspoon.
- 3 cups ( 384 g ) all-purpose flour, plus more for your work surface
- 3 tablespoons ( 44 g ) sugar
- 1 tablespoon ( 13 g ) baking powder
- 1.5 teaspoon sea salt or 2 teaspoons kosher salt ( 10 g ), see notes above
- ½ teaspoon ( 2 g ) baking soda
- 12 tablespoons ( 170 g ) cold unsalted butter, diced, plus more for serving
- 1¼ cups ( 330 g ) cold buttermilk
- pure maple syrup, for rubbing the biscuits
- nice sea salt or coarse freshly ground black pepper for sprinkling
- Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
- Whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and baking soda in a large bowl. Using your fingers, work in the butter just until the mixture turns into coarse crumbs with some pea-size pieces of butter remaining. Using a wooden spoon, stir in the buttermilk just until the dry ingredients are evenly moistened.
- Turn the shaggy dough out onto a very lightly floured work surface and pat into a ½-inch thick rectangle. Fold it in half once so that it’s 1-inch thick. Do this three more times to create layers in the dough. Then roll the dough out to about a 1-inch thick rectangle (or large enough so that a 3-inch biscuit cutter can stamp out 6 biscuits) using a lightly floured rolling pin: Place the pin in the middle of the dough and roll it forward, then put the pin back in the middle of the dough and roll it backward.
- Using a lightly floured 3-inch round cutter, cut out the biscuits (in one motion — do not twist the cutter), as close together as possible, and transfer to the prepared baking sheet leaving 2 inches between them. Gently pat the dough scraps together (do not overwork the dough), reroll and cut out more biscuits. (Note: You could just cut the rectangle into 8 squares, which will leave you with no scraps to reroll.)
- If you have time, put the baking sheet in the refrigerator and chill the biscuits for at least an hour before baking — they will be flakier. (Skip this step if you don’t have time.)
- Preheat oven to 425ºF.
- Use the back of a spoon to rub the biscuits lightly with maple syrup and sprinkle with salt or pepper to taste.
- Place the biscuits in the oven and immediately turn the temperature down to 400ºF. Bake the biscuits until they’re risen and golden, 15 to 20 minutes. I get the best results baking these on the top rack of my oven, but every oven is different, so play around with what works best with your oven. Serve warm, with butter.
- Prep Time: 25 minutes
- Cook Time: 20 minutes
I have read about Joanne Chang in blogs and magazines for years, watched her beat Bobby Flay in a sticky bun throwdown , drooled over both of her cookbooks at the library, but for reasons I can’t explain had never made any of her recipes until a few days ago.
Joanne Chang’s Buttermilk Biscuits
The recipe for buttermilk biscuits with maple and black pepper featured below, is in Dana Cowin’s new cookbook, Mastering My Mistakes in the Kitchen. Many of you likely know Dana as the Editor in Chief of Food and Wine magazine, as someone who knows food better than anyone, as someone who wouldn’t make too many mistakes in the kitchen, or who would be an unlikely person to admit to them.
What follows in the book are recipes with advice and tips from 65 professional chefs, including Jean-Georges Vongerichten, Jose Andres, April Bloomfield, David Chang, and Thomas Keller who offers a three-step, foolproof recipe for roast chicken.
Despite the presence and importance of these chefs in the book, however, the recipes are not cheffy at all: think meatballs (and how to make them light and tender), potstickers (and how to make them not only brown but also crisp), great ribs (and a no-fuss way to make them).
Of the 20 recipes I have bookmarked, top picks include halibut cooked in red coconut curry, baked ziti Arrabbiata, Korean meat loaf (made with a whole cup of gochujang chile paste), and braised chicken with leeks.
How to make Better Biscuits
I have made many a biscuit over the years, but until making this recipe, never have I folded the dough over itself four times before cutting it, a step that helps create beautiful layers in the finished biscuits, and never have I chilled the cut biscuits for an hour before baking, a step that helps make the biscuits flakier. This recipe is appended with 10 tips from Joanne ranging from how best to incorporate baking soda (I never would have imagined this to be an issue) to the role sugar plays in baking not only for sweetness but also for texture (also news to me).
- Folding the dough four times truly creates incredible flakiness. These biscuits are the lightest, flakiest, best biscuits I’ve ever made.
- For a taller biscuit, roll the dough to a thickness of 1-inch.
- Maple syrup + Maldon sea salt make for an irresistible salty-sweet top.
- Bake on the highest rack for beautifully golden biscuits in 15 minutes. (Every oven is different, however, so watch closely and adjust accordingly)
- For no-waste (trimmings/scraps) biscuits, cut the dough into squares as opposed to circles.
If you live in the area, this is the best buttermilk. Argyle Cheese Farmer also makes the best yogurt . The Niskayuna Co-op carries both:
The four-fold shaping process:
I find that a one-inch thick dough creates the size biscuit I like best
Square biscuit made from the scraps:
hhb
Description
Source Dana Cowin’s Mastering My Mistakes in the Kitchen .
Update November 2021: I recently upped the amount of salt here. It had previously been 1 teaspoon (6 grams). I think these biscuits need the updated amount (reflected in the ingredient list below), but if you’ve made these in the past and have been satisfied with the result, you can stick to the 1 teaspoon.
- 3 cups ( 384 g ) all-purpose flour, plus more for your work surface
- 3 tablespoons ( 44 g ) sugar
- 1 tablespoon ( 13 g ) baking powder
- 1.5 teaspoon sea salt or 2 teaspoons kosher salt ( 10 g ), see notes above
- ½ teaspoon ( 2 g ) baking soda
- 12 tablespoons ( 170 g ) cold unsalted butter, diced, plus more for serving
- 1¼ cups ( 330 g ) cold buttermilk
- pure maple syrup, for rubbing the biscuits
- nice sea salt or coarse freshly ground black pepper for sprinkling
- Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
- Whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and baking soda in a large bowl. Using your fingers, work in the butter just until the mixture turns into coarse crumbs with some pea-size pieces of butter remaining. Using a wooden spoon, stir in the buttermilk just until the dry ingredients are evenly moistened.
- Turn the shaggy dough out onto a very lightly floured work surface and pat into a ½-inch thick rectangle. Fold it in half once so that it’s 1-inch thick. Do this three more times to create layers in the dough. Then roll the dough out to about a 1-inch thick rectangle (or large enough so that a 3-inch biscuit cutter can stamp out 6 biscuits) using a lightly floured rolling pin: Place the pin in the middle of the dough and roll it forward, then put the pin back in the middle of the dough and roll it backward.
- Using a lightly floured 3-inch round cutter, cut out the biscuits (in one motion — do not twist the cutter), as close together as possible, and transfer to the prepared baking sheet leaving 2 inches between them. Gently pat the dough scraps together (do not overwork the dough), reroll and cut out more biscuits. (Note: You could just cut the rectangle into 8 squares, which will leave you with no scraps to reroll.)
- If you have time, put the baking sheet in the refrigerator and chill the biscuits for at least an hour before baking — they will be flakier. (Skip this step if you don’t have time.)
- Preheat oven to 425ºF.
- Use the back of a spoon to rub the biscuits lightly with maple syrup and sprinkle with salt or pepper to taste.
- Place the biscuits in the oven and immediately turn the temperature down to 400ºF. Bake the biscuits until they’re risen and golden, 15 to 20 minutes. I get the best results baking these on the top rack of my oven, but every oven is different, so play around with what works best with your oven. Serve warm, with butter.
- Prep Time: 25 minutes
- Cook Time: 20 minutes
Description
Source Dana Cowin’s Mastering My Mistakes in the Kitchen .
Update November 2021: I recently upped the amount of salt here. It had previously been 1 teaspoon (6 grams). I think these biscuits need the updated amount (reflected in the ingredient list below), but if you’ve made these in the past and have been satisfied with the result, you can stick to the 1 teaspoon.
- 3 cups ( 384 g ) all-purpose flour, plus more for your work surface
- 3 tablespoons ( 44 g ) sugar
- 1 tablespoon ( 13 g ) baking powder
- 1.5 teaspoon sea salt or 2 teaspoons kosher salt ( 10 g ), see notes above
- ½ teaspoon ( 2 g ) baking soda
- 12 tablespoons ( 170 g ) cold unsalted butter, diced, plus more for serving
- 1¼ cups ( 330 g ) cold buttermilk
- pure maple syrup, for rubbing the biscuits
- nice sea salt or coarse freshly ground black pepper for sprinkling
- Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
- Whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and baking soda in a large bowl. Using your fingers, work in the butter just until the mixture turns into coarse crumbs with some pea-size pieces of butter remaining. Using a wooden spoon, stir in the buttermilk just until the dry ingredients are evenly moistened.
- Turn the shaggy dough out onto a very lightly floured work surface and pat into a ½-inch thick rectangle. Fold it in half once so that it’s 1-inch thick. Do this three more times to create layers in the dough. Then roll the dough out to about a 1-inch thick rectangle (or large enough so that a 3-inch biscuit cutter can stamp out 6 biscuits) using a lightly floured rolling pin: Place the pin in the middle of the dough and roll it forward, then put the pin back in the middle of the dough and roll it backward.
- Using a lightly floured 3-inch round cutter, cut out the biscuits (in one motion — do not twist the cutter), as close together as possible, and transfer to the prepared baking sheet leaving 2 inches between them. Gently pat the dough scraps together (do not overwork the dough), reroll and cut out more biscuits. (Note: You could just cut the rectangle into 8 squares, which will leave you with no scraps to reroll.)
- If you have time, put the baking sheet in the refrigerator and chill the biscuits for at least an hour before baking — they will be flakier. (Skip this step if you don’t have time.)
- Preheat oven to 425ºF.
- Use the back of a spoon to rub the biscuits lightly with maple syrup and sprinkle with salt or pepper to taste.
- Place the biscuits in the oven and immediately turn the temperature down to 400ºF. Bake the biscuits until they’re risen and golden, 15 to 20 minutes. I get the best results baking these on the top rack of my oven, but every oven is different, so play around with what works best with your oven. Serve warm, with butter.
- Prep Time: 25 minutes
- Cook Time: 20 minutes
Find it online : https://alexandracooks.com/2014/10/08/buttermilk-biscuits-with-maple-sea-salt-also-tips-from-joanne-chang-on-biscuit-making/
Nigella Lawson’s recipe for dense chocolate loaf cafe , well traversed in the blogosphere, needs no tinkering. Moist, rich, tender, chocolatey — what’s to improve?
Well, when my box of Fair Trade treats arrived, and I saw the bag of coffee and chocolate nestled together, I couldn’t help think that coffee, known to heighten the flavor of chocolate without imparting much coffee flavor at all, might make a subtle difference.
And because a splash of booze is often a nice addition to quick breads/loaf cakes, what would be the harm in replacing the final two tablespoons of water with brandy? And because every cake needs a pinch of salt, a pinch of salt would be added, too.
The result? Intense chocolate, subtle coffee and booze, perfect sweetness, complete deliciousness. This cake gets better by the day and is as impossible to resist with morning coffee as with postprandial cordials. Coffee, booze, salt — somehow I think you (and Nigella) would approve.
So, Friends, as you know it is October, when we celebrate all things Fair Trade, from chocolate to coffee to quinoa . Let’s review what Fair Trade means:
What is Fair Trade?
- Products that bear the Fair Trade logo come from farmers and workers who are justly compensated.
- Fair Trade helps farmers (more than 1.2 million worldwide) in developing countries build sustainable businesses that positively influence their communities.
- Fair Trade ensures that farmers follow internationally monitored environmental standards and also provides financial incentives and resources for organic conversion, reforestation, water conservation and environmental education.
- Fair Trade empowers women to play an active role in their families and in their co-ops by starting businesses with guaranteed access to health care, certain job rights and freedom from harassment.
- Fair Trade supports education with revenues set aside to build schools and maintain enrollment.
In Nigella’s cake I used Guittard semi-sweet chocolate, though bittersweet works well, too, and Equator Mocha Java coffee:
Don’t be tempted to pour the whole batter into one 8.5×4.5-inch loaf pan — it will overflow . That said, if you have a 9×5-inch or 10×5-inch loaf pan, you can fit the entire batter in it.
If you can resist, let it rest for a full day before cutting:
Description
Changes I’ve made include:
Reducing the brown sugar from 1 2/3 cups to 1 1/2 cups. I find dark or light works just fine.
Replacing the water with coffee and booze. I use my Nespresso machine to make espresso, which I add water to to make 1 cup. If you don’t feel like adding booze or coffee, simply use 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons boiling water instead.
Upped the vanilla.
Added salt.
1 cup ( 228 g ) soft unsalted butter
1 1/2 cups ( 300 g ) brown sugar
1 1/3 cups ( 170 g ) all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon ( 5 g ) baking soda
1 teaspoon ( 4 g ) kosher salt
2 large eggs, beaten
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
4 ounces ( 113 g ) best bittersweet or semisweet chocolate, melted
2 tablespoons ( 28 g ) Brandy or Bourbon or Grand Marnier, see notes above
1 cup ( 227 g ) brewed coffee, see notes above
- Heat the oven to 375°F. Line a 9×5-inch or 10×5-inch loaf pan with parchment paper. Grease the inside ends of the pan if they are exposed. If you only have an 8.5×4.5-inch loaf pan, prepare it along with another small vessel with parchment paper — do not be tempted to bake the entire batter in it as it will overflow.
- Cream the butter and sugar, either with a wooden spoon or with an electric hand-held mixer, being sure not to overbeat it.
- Meanwhile, whisk together the flour, baking soda, and salt. Set aside.
- Add the eggs and vanilla to the butter-sugar mixture and beat until combined.
- Next, fold in the melted and now slightly cooled chocolate, taking care to blend well but being careful not to overbeat. You want the ingredients combined: You don’t want a light, airy mass. Add the brandy and coffee mix to combine.
- Finally, add the flour mixture and mix only until the flour is absorbed. The batter should be smooth and fairly liquidy.
- Pour into the lined loaf pan, being sure the batter does not come closer than 1 inch from the rim of the cake pan or it risks overflowing. Bake for 30 minutes. Turn the oven down to 325ºF and continue to cook for another 15 to 20 minutes more. (If baking some of the batter in a small pan, remove after the first 30 minutes.) Remove the pan from the oven. The cake will still be a bit squidgy inside, so an inserted cake tester or skewer won’t come out completely clean. Place the loaf pan on a rack, and leave it to get completely cold before turning it out. (Leave it for a whole day if you can resist.) Don’t worry if it sinks in the middle — it will do so because it’s such a dense and damp cake.
- Prep Time: 15 minutes
- Cook Time: 45 minutes
- Category: Quick Bread
- Method: Oven
- Cuisine: American
