Looking back through my list of posts, I seem to have a thing for multiples – there’s a couple of versions of banana bread, I’ve done a few pancake variations, and it appears now biscuits are joining the list!
These evolved last night as a result of a bit of improvisation, and the discovery of an unopened bag of Only Oats flour on the pantry shelf yesterday afternoon.
This is a recipe for those of you able to tolerate oats. Only Oats are a Canadian product, grown in dedicated, wheat-free fields, harvested with dedicated combines and milled in wheat-free facilities. The flour is lovely – it provides a nice moist, tender crumb to baking. If you can’t tolerate oats, you could make a very similar flour by blitzing buckwheat flakes or buckwheat groats in a spice or coffee grinder.
This is part-recipe and part method. The flaky layers are achieved mainly through folding and rolling the dough multiple times, similar to puff pastry, but less labour intensive. This is especially important with the oat flour, since it has a tendency to bake up … well, like oatmeal!
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My starting point for this recipe was to use Michael Ruhlman‘s basic biscuit ratio of 3:1:2 (by weight, 3 parts flour: 1 part fat: 2 parts liquid). I ended up tweaking it a bit as I went, increasing the fat slightly, and increasing the liquid since I had added gums.
Now for the process part! You will need a rolling pin and a flat surface to roll the dough out. You are going to cut the butter in with a pastry cutter, leaving pea-sized lumps of butter in the mix. By rolling this out to about 1/2″ thick and folding it over on itself, you are going to get successively thinner sheets of butter in the dough. Make sure to roll it, rather than knead it, as you want the butter melding into the dough in those thin horizontal layers. It sounds more complicated than it actually is, and you will find that a couple of turns of the dough will get you an increasingly supple dough. While this sounds like a lot of work, it does go fairly quickly by hand, and you can have biscuits ready and on the baking sheet within the time it takes to preheat your oven.
Ingredients
- 1 cup Janice's bread flour blend* or other general purpose GF blend
- 1 cup oat flour (use a certified wheat-free brand)
- 1/2 cup (1/4 lb) cold, unsalted butter
- 1 tsp salt
- 3/4 tsp xanthan gum
- 1 T baking powder
- 3/4 cup - 1 cup half and half
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 375 degrees
- In a medium bowl, combine all the dry ingredients and whisk well to combine.
- Cut the cold butter in cubes, and cut into the dry ingredients with a pastry cutter, leaving a few pea-sized pieces.
- Add the half and half or milk to the mixture, starting with 3/4 cup and adding more as needed to bring the dough together.
- Empty out onto a counter or silpat mat dusted with oat flour. Bring together any loose scraps into a cohesive ball and roll out until about 1/2" thick. It will be rough to begin, but become more supply as you roll it.
- Fold the dough over on itself in thirds, and roll out again ... repeat at least once more, and up to 5 times. If you roll more than twice, chilling the dough for 30 minutes in between will help.
- Roll out to 1/2" thick one last time and cut out biscuits with a biscuit cutter (or use a knife to cut squares or triangles. Place on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Brush with egg or melted butter. Bake for 25-30 minutes.
Notes
*Janice's bread flour blend 1/2 cup finely ground brown rice flour 1/2 cup potato flour 1 cup sorghum flour 1 cup garfava flour 3 cups tapioca starch 3 cups cornstarch or arrowroot powder or potato starch
Variations of these biscuits could be made with buttermilk instead of the half and half for a slightly fluffier biscuit. Reduce the baking powder to 1 tsp, and add 1/2 tsp baking soda to the dry ingredients. For a more "scone" like version, add 1 egg to the liquid ingredients, while reducing the half and half by 1/4 cup. For a dairy-free version, use a stick-vegan shortening such as Earth Balance buttery sticks, and a non-dairy milk. You will need to reduce the salt to about 1/2 teaspoon.
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In Your Oat flour biscuit recipe, where you list the ingredients. there is a 3/4 tsp. listed but of what?? there is no ingredient. I would like to make these, but would like them to turn out right. I need to know what the missing ingredient is. Thank you Sincerely Theresa P.
Thanks for catching that Theresa! The missing ingredient is xanthan gum. It will be changed in the printable recipe