Whole Wheat Buttermilk Biscuits
Every good southerner loves a fresh buttermilk biscuit whether they want to admit it or not. I’m not talking about the ones you pop out of the tube and into the oven. I’m talking about the real deal, hand mixed, kneaded, and cut with a biscuit cutter biscuits – warm from the oven with a little butter.Unfortunately, biscuits are such a fat fest that they’ve been relegated to “treat” status at my house. When I saw this recipe for Whole Wheat Buttermilk Biscuits in America’s Test Kitchen – “Healthy Recipes”, I got excited. A relatively healthy biscuit I can eat without completely wrecking my day? Is it really possible? Yes. It’s possible for only 6 fat grams and 150 calories each.
The original recipe calls for regular whole wheat flour but I had white wheat flour in the pantry so that’s what I used. If you use regular whole wheat flour your dough will be somewhat darker. Some of the butter called for in regular biscuit recipes is replaced with light cream cheese. Make sure the butter and cream cheese are frozen solid so they can be cut into the flour easily. Kneading helps give you tall light biscuits but be careful not to over knead. It will make them tough.
Whole Wheat Buttermilk Biscuits
Ingredients
- 6 Tbsp. unsalted butter
- 1 1/2 oz. light cream cheese (about 3 Tbsp)
- 2 cups all-purpose flour (10 oz)
- 1 cup whole-wheat flour (5 1/2 oz)
- 4 tsp. sugar
- 1 Tbsp. baking powder
- 3/4 tsp. salt
- 1/2 tsp. baking soda
- 1 1/4 cups cold lowfat buttermilk
Instructions
- Dice the butter and cream cheese into 1/2 inch pieces and place in the freezer for 1 hour.
- Heat oven to 450 degrees. Line baking sheet with parchment paper or a silpat.
- Put both flours, sugar, baking powder, salt, and baking soda in a food processor. Pulse 3 times to combine. Drop cream cheese and butter into the flour mixture and pulse until mixture looks like coarse meal.
- Transfer mixture to a large bowl and add buttermilk. Stir with a spatula until the dough comes together. Put dough onto a lightly floured surface and knead 8 to 10 times. Form dough into a 9 inch disk and roll out (or pat down) to 3/4 inch thickness. Be careful not to overwork.
- Cut out 12 biscuits and place on baking sheet. Put baking sheet on middle rack in oven.
- Bake 5 minutes. Rotate the baking sheet and turn oven down to 400 degrees. Bake for another 12 to 15 minutes.
- The bottom of the biscuits should be golden brown on the bottom when done.
2 Comments
Mara
March 13, 2013Hi just want to know if the pictures shown above shows how it will look using white wheat?
jfoster
March 14, 2013Yes that’s what they looked like with white wheat.