Alright, we know it’s been a few days (weeks) since Thanksgiving, and we’re just now getting around to show you the new recipe we tried out for the holiday. We’re sorry! It’s been a busy December, and soon we’ll be featuring our annual Christmas cookies plus some more holiday fare. But right now we wanted to write about this savory bread that we contributed to Turkey Day, based on this recipe in Bon Appétit. There’s a secret ingredient here that makes for a different biscuit experience, plus some other good and fresh things that all come together to make for a unique type of bread that you can serve during big, festive meals. Now that Thanksgiving has come and gone, you can also consider cooking these up for your Christmas meal – so here’s how to make them for yourselves.
You’ll need:
- A 6-ounce block of cheddar
- Cornmeal
- Sugar
- A small bunch of sage
- Baking powder
- Flour
- 2 sticks of butter
- Frozen corn
- Buttermilk
To start on your dough, measure 2 cups of flour into a food processor and add in 1/2 cup of cornmeal, 1/3 cup of sugar, 1 1/2 teaspoons of baking powder, and a large pinch of salt. Grate up all your cheese and chop about 2 tablespoons of sage and add those in as well.
Quickly combine everything together, then take a stick of butter straight out of the fridge, cut it up into small pieces, and add it in. Run the food processor for just long enough to incorporate the butter into the rest of the ingredients, then cut up the second stick of butter, also right from the fridge, and add it in as well.
Combine everything together until you have a mixture that looks like coarse sand, then scrape this into a bowl and set inside your fridge to chill.
Now place 1/2 cup of defrosted corn kernels into the food processor, plus 3/4 cup of buttermilk, and combine together until you have a lumpy liquid. Stir this into the cornmeal mixture, and you should get a somewhat dry and crumbly dough – if it’s too dry and not sticking together you can add in more buttermilk, one tablespoon at a time. Knead the dough for about 5 minutes on a floured surface and shape into a rectangle that’s roughly 6 inches by 4 inches. Cut this into two equal parts and place one half on top of the other, then press the dough back into the same-sized rectangle. Repeat this process of cutting, stacking and shaping two more times (this will help give the biscuits some flaky layers), then form your dough into a nicer, more even rectangle of the same size as before.
Place this dough rectangle on a baking sheet and stick in the fridge for at least an hour, and when you’re ready to bake, cut it into 8 equal biscuits. Lay parchment paper on the baking sheet and place the biscuits on the paper, then brush each with a little extra buttermilk and sprinkle some salt on top.
Bake at 400°F for 10 minutes, then spin the baking sheet around and place in the oven for another 10-15 minutes, until each biscuit is cooked inside but not too browned on the outside.
Then you can serve them up at your holiday table, or whenever you feel like!
Overall these weren’t too hard to make – you just measure a few ingredients, chop sage, grate cheese, and let your food processor make you a dough. Then when it comes to shaping the biscuits, you only have to knead the dough for a little bit, stack and cut it, and then you can pop your biscuits in the oven. One word of advice we have is that you want to make sure your dough isn’t too wet, or it’ll result in overly dense biscuits – so it’s better to air on the side of having the dough be too dry, and then you can add in more buttermilk in small amounts as needed. And when it was time to eat our Thanksgiving meal, we liked that these weren’t your traditional biscuit, but instead brought in cornbread flavors from both cornmeal and corn kernels. This paired well with the cheddar and fresh herbs and made for a complex biscuit with a lot of different tastes in it. These are a good and hearty bread to serve at a gathering, so whether you want to make this for the upcoming holiday season or save it until Thanksgiving comes around next year, these are perfect for adding in to your celebrations.