One of my favorite comfort foods over the years has been made from scratch baking powder biscuits. I enjoy biscuits and gravy, strawberry shortcake made with biscuits as the base and biscuits with just butter and jelly or honey. I recently found a restaurant near me that serves their sandwiches on homemade cheddar biscuits. Delicious!
When making biscuits at home, it can sometimes be a challenge to make them rise high and have straight sides. The goal is light and tender not heavy and tough. Ingredients and procedure have an effect of course but so does how you cut them out. You will achieve the best results by using something with a sharp edge and cutting straight down without twisting. Over the years some people have used glasses to cut biscuits out. It is hard to get a clean cut with a glass. Twisting is usually needed when using a glass also. These two movements end up compressing the edges of the biscuits and preventing the biscuits from getting the high rise and the traditional crack around the middle.
If you do not have good sharp biscuit cutters and do not make biscuits often enough to warrant the investment, you may use a sharp knife or pizza wheel to achieve the same results. And you do not need to make your biscuits round! The restaurant I have discovered serves their sandwiches on square biscuits.
If you are going to make square biscuits it is important to trim a strip around your square of dough before cutting into squares. Failing to do this will result in misshaped biscuits that will slope down toward the untrimmed side. You can bake the scraps of biscuit dough and enjoy though so nothing goes to waste.
I am looking forward to trying to replicate the cheddar biscuits this new-to-me restaurant makes and coming up with sandwich filling ingredients that will pair well with them!
