Pecan Sour Cream Biscuits - The Best Biscuits Ever!

Tuesday, April 22, 2008, by Leigh Anne

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“Feeding the people we love”

Today’s recipe is for my southern, biscuit loving friend Sherra. Don’t all good southern girls love biscuits?

If you ever visit food blogs you may have discovered a weekly challenge that many of the food bloggers participate in - Tuesdays with Dorie. The group is, recipe by recipe, baking their way through Baking from my Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan. Each week a recipe is chosen and each food blogger puts their own spin on it and posts their version and photos on their food blog.

I have enjoyed watching their weekly challenges and even trying a few at home - maybe some day I’ll get brave enough to officially join the group.

A couple of months ago the recipe of the week was Pecan Sour Cream Biscuits. I copied it off and finally gave it a try for Sunday dinner this week. They are awesome!!

My husband commented not once, but twice at the dinner table on how amazing they were. Later in the day I overheard him on the phone to his mother when he told her that I had made “the best biscuits he had ever tasted” for dinner that day.

Now, my husband is not a southern boy, he is an Idaho boy, but he sure liked those biscuits!

LA Notes: If you have not made biscuits before, the trick is to handle the dough as little as possible - the less you handle it, the fluffier the biscuits. I used frozen butter and then grated it instead of cutting it in with a pastry blender. It worked great! I bought my pecans already chopped and toasted from Trade Joe’s. The brown sugar in the dough makes these biscuits extra yummy! I also used skim milk because that’s all we had in the house. Maybe it saved us a few calories?!

pecan sour cream biscuits - Page 065

2 cups all-purpose flour (or 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour and 1/3 cup cake flour)
1 tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 cup (packed) light brown sugar
5 tbsp cold unsalted butter, cut into 10 pieces* (or grate frozen butter)
1/2 cup cold sour cream
1/4 cup cold whole milk
1/3 cup finely chopped pecans, preferably toasted

Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 425F. Get out a sharp 2-inch-diameter biscuit cutter, and line a baking sheet with parchment or a silicone mat.

Whisk the flour(s), baking powder, salt and baking soda together in a bowl. Stir in the brown sugar, making certain there are no lumps. Drop in the butter and, using your fingers, toss to coat the pieces of butter with flour. Quickly, working with your fingertips or a pastry blender, cut and rub the butter into the dry ingredients until the mixture is pebbly. You’ll have pea-size pieces, pieces the size of oatmeal flakes and pieces the size of everything in between - and that’s just right.

Stir the sour cream and milk together and pour over the dry ingredients. Grab a fork and gently toss and turn the ingredients together until you’ve got a nice soft dough. Now reach into the bowl with your hands and give the dough a quick, gentle kneading - 3 or 4 turns should be just enough to bring everything together. Toss in the pecans and knead another 2 to 3 times to incorporate them.

Lightly dust a work surface with flour and turn out the dough. Dust the top of the dough very lightly with flour and pat the dough out with your hands or roll it with a pin until it is about 1/2 inch high. Don’t worry if the dough isn’t completely even - a quick, light touch is more important than accuracy.

Use the biscuit cutter to cut out as many biscuits as you can. Try to the cut the biscuits close to one another so you get the most you can out of this first round. By hand or with a small spatula, transfer the biscuits to the baking sheet. Gather together the scraps, working them as little as possible, pat out to a 1/2-inch thickness and cut as many additional biscuits as you can; transfer these to the sheet. (The biscuits can be made to this point and frozen on the baking sheet, then wrapped airtight and kept for up to 2 months. Bake without defrosting - just add a couple more minutes to the oven time.)

Bake the biscuits 14 to 18 minutes, or until they are tall, puffed and golden brown. Transfer them to a serving basket.

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Categories: Nourish, Recipes