Friday, November 14, 2008

Whole Wheat Biscuits

Elizabeth slept a little late this morning, so when she started waking up, I teased her and asked if she was going to sleep all day.

"No. I just have a lot of sleepy points this morning."

I love her creative mind!

On to the recipe... I have been wondering if I could make biscuits with whole wheat flour. My gang loves canned biscuits, so I wanted to see if I could make something a little healthier. I realize the words biscuit and healthy are not usually used in the same sentence, but I am adventurous and wanted to try. A quick internet search yielded a few recipes, so I played with them a bit and came up with the following recipe. The biscuits were good. They are not the soft, flaky, perfectly round biscuits that your grandmother made, if your grandmother used lots of Crisco and rolled the dough out with her wooden rolling pin, then used a drinking glass to cut perfect circles, and made a big pan of sausage gravy in her cast-iron skillet while they baked. No, they aren't like that. But they are good. I want to keep looking and playing with this idea in an effort to improve the biscuits, but I will make these again. The children loved them, and that's the important thing to me (other than that healthy thing).

I doubled this recipe and made what my brother calls drip biscuits. You probably call them drop biscuits. Instead of making a thicker dough that I could roll out, I made a wetter batter that I could spoon. I baked one batch in my mini-muffin tin, like my grandmother sometimes did. These make nice, little, bite-sized biscuits. I used the leftover batter to make 6 regular sized biscuits on a cookie sheet. I keep meaning to take pictures that I can post. I will try to remember the next time.

The recipe:

1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup all purpose flour
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
about 1 cup skim milk (I suspect 2%, whole, or buttermilk would work. This is what one of the recipes called for and what I happened to have in the refrigerator.)
1/3 cup oil (I used olive oil, again because that is what I had on hand. I am not an expert on the way different oils affect flavor. I just know olive oil is good for you, and I am not willing to keep five different types in my small kitchen.)

Preheat oven to 400. (You may want to adjust the temperture depending on your oven. I will probably try 425 the next time.) Combine dry ingredients. Combine milk and oil in a separate bowl. Make a depression in the center of the dry ingredients and add the liquid mixture. Stir only until all ingredients are moist. Drop onto a cookie sheet or into mini-muffin cups. Bake until lightly browned, about 12 minutes.

Enjoy!

Blessings,
Bev

1 comment:

Mary said...

Wow, 5 kids! do you know what causes that? LOL -just teasing, I love the comment you left for me. I do hear that question too.

My kids love biscuits and gravy! I'll have to try your recipe and see how that goes over with my picky girls. They love the sausage and country gravy so much, they might not even notice a change in the biscuit. Thanks for the recipe!