Welcome to Cranky Puppy Farm!

This blog belongs to two Gen X-er's smackdab in downtown Kansas City where we've been renovating and decorating two old Victorians built in the 1890's. Our life is filled with 3 demanding Pomeranians (1 of them cranky, of course), honking cars, noisy neighbors and the hustle and bustle of city life but we dream of the day when we can move to our 40-acre farm and hear nothing but the wind and the cows next door. Until then, we're chronicling our triumphs and mishaps here as we try to garden and preserve on 2 city lots, raise chickens, and learn all those things we should have learned from our grandparents. Welcome to our world - we hope you'll stay awhile!

Well, Butter my Biscuit!

Saturday, January 19, 2013

Check these babies out...

Butter, honey, or gravy?  Yes, please!
My honey made those!  And they were oh-so-delicious with breakfast this morning.  If I may opine for moment:  there is nothing better than freshly baked bread or biscuits.  So imagine my surprise when J. yelled up the stairs at me that breakfast was ready this morning and I came down to find this.

Now what has gotten into that man?  I don't know, but it's all good.  :-)

And if making homemade biscuits wasn't awesome enough, he was also making bread for the first time.  Here it is right after coming out of proofing.


Beautiful.  I told him to punch it down so that I could take a picture of him doing it and instead he stuck his hand on it and pushed down.  Can you see the hand print?

Out of this big ball of dough, he was able to make one full size and one mini size loaf of white bread and ten dinner rolls.  The mini loaf got eaten right out of the oven (of course!)

I think he did a great job, especially after my first try didn't come out so well - it tasted great, but didn't rise enough and had way to much crust.  We ultimately discovered it was because of old yeast.

But this bread was pretty darn close to perfect.  He said the one thing he would do is use the Rapid Proofing setting on our oven the second time around.  And over dinner we talked about using real bread flour instead of white processed and the idea of even grinding our own flour.  There may be a post about choosing grain mills in my future!

So we can officially mark this goal off our list from last year (okay, we're a little late, I know).  If you're interested in trying out our bread recipe, you can find it in this post.  If you want to try out J.'s biscuit recipe, well....here it is!

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Cranky Puppy's Good Morning Biscuits
Makes 6 grand-sized biscuits

Ingredients
  • 2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1 tablespoon white sugar
  • 8 tablespoons (1/3 cup) of butter or butter-flavored shortening
  • 3/4 cup milk or buttermilk

Directions
  1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees F.
  2. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar (or pulse in a food processor).
  3. Cut in the shortening until the mixture resembles coarse meal.
  4. Gradually stir in milk until dough pulls away from the side of the bowl.
  5. Turn out onto a floured surface, and knead 15 to 20 times.
  6. Pat or roll dough out to 1 inch thick.
  7. Cut biscuits with a large cutter or juice glass dipped in flour. Repeat until all dough is used.
  8. Brush off the excess flour, and place biscuits onto an ungreased baking sheet.
  9. Bake for 13 to 15 minutes or until edges begin to brown.
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TIP for new biscuit-makers:  Any time you make biscuits (or anything that uses baking powder or soda to rise) you want to gently mix the dough JUST until the ingredients are all mixed.  The more you handle your dough the more the gluten develops and the tougher your biscuits, pie crust, etc. will be.
If you make these or come up with a better recipe based on this one, please let us know! 

I've shared this recipe with this week's Mop It Monday, HomeStead Barn, Show and Tell Saturday hops.  Go check it out!

9 comments:

  1. fantastic recipe! We love fresh baked bread but i'm the one in the kitchen for this one. Thanks for sharing!

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  2. Make sure to slather it with a nice helping of raw honey! Let me know when you need more, we've got plenty to share!

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  3. One small modification: if you're using salted butter, lower the salt to 1/2 teaspoon. Otherwise they'll end up too salty.

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  4. I think it is awesome that he even tried. You have a good one there! I found you from the "I should be mopping the floor" blog hop. My entry is #105 for this week, crock pot roast. Hope you will stop by and visit!
    http://www.countrifiedhicks.com
    http://www.facebook.com/countrifiedhicks

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  5. well butter MY biscuit - those are beautiful! great work! and yep you should get a grain mill. we fed our wheat to the chickens but next year we'll be growing it for us. its a GREAT crop to grow and so easy.
    :-D

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  6. Oooohhhhhh.....I can't wait to try these and I'm going to check out your bread recipe also. Love your blog!

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  7. Hi, I’m Anne from Life on the Funny Farm (http://annesfunnyfarm.blogspot.com), and I’m visiting from the Homestead Barn Hop.

    Ooooh yummy yummy. These biscuits look so delicious! I loves me some good old fashioned hot buttery biscuits. Can't wait to try this recipe!

    Anyway, thanks for posting this. If you’ve never visited yet, I hope you can pop by my blog sometime to say hi…

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  8. Yummy. Now you can add hives for honey on your biscuits to your To Do farm list. Oh, how one project leads to another ;) Stevie@ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com

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