My latest attempt in the kitchen? Baking Buttermilk Biscuits with Fresh-Milled Flour! I decided to try a traditional recipe and swap out the commercial white flour for a blend of Soft White Wheat and Kamut. Both have very low gluten content, so I figured I’d give it a try.
I ground the wheat berries and Kamut on nearly the finest setting I could. I was pleased the resulting flour wasn’t overly hot. That can harm some of the nutrients, and I want to preserve as many as possible. I don’t cook with a recipe, but here’s the best I can do.
Whole Grain Buttermilk Biscuits
- Preheat the oven to 450℉. Grease a cast-iron skillet or griddle and place it in the oven to heat.
Dry Ingredients:
- 3 ½ to 4 c. Whole Grain Flour – 448g wheat berries. (I used Soft White Wheat and Kamut in a 2:1 ratio.)
- 1 tsp Salt
- 2 T. Sugar
- 1 T. Baking Powder
- Wet Ingredients:
- 1 Stick of cold, unsalted butter, grated or cubed
- 1 ½ c. cold buttermilk
Directions:
- Mix the dry ingredients well, then sift into a mixing bowl.
- Grate or cube a stick of cold, unsalted butter into the bowl of flour, then add 1 ½ cup of buttermilk. Add 1 c. and mix with your hands or a Danish dough whisk. Add the other ¼ c. of buttermilk a little at a time and stop when you get a heavy dough. It will be a little wet and sticky, but the flour will soak up some of that. You don’t knead this dough. You scrape it out on a well-floured work surface and fold it over on itself a few times. You just want it mixed well, not to develop gluten. Be sure you don’t over-knead it. Using a rolling pin dusted with flour, roll the dough to about an inch thick. Brush with a little melted butter, then fold the dough in half. Repeat this a couple of times, then use a biscuit cutter to cut as many biscuits out as possible. Gather the scraps and repeat the process till you’ve used all the dough.
- Place the biscuits on the hot cast iron. If you want a softer biscuit, place them close together. If you like a crispier biscuit, place them out separately.
- Bake between 12 and 14 minutes. Remove them from the oven and serve them hot with butter. Top with jam, jelly, or apple butter.
If you have leftovers, warm them in a toaster oven or under the broiler till they are the temperature you want. Don’t keep them in too long, or you will just have hard hockey pucks.
Honestly…I love baking with fresh-milled flour. The results are far more flavorful than those you get with commercially milled flour. And you get all the nutrients that commercial mills strip out and replace with enhancers, chemicals, and synthetic vitamins and minerals.
If you don’t have access to fresh milled flour, you can use this recipe with commercial flour. Fresh flour starts losing its nutrients as soon as it’s ground. If you find a place that sells “fresh milled flour”, ask them when it was ground, where and how it was stored, and what kind of berries were used.
💜
The jar of flour was not spent, neither did the jug of oil become empty, according to the word of the Lord that he spoke by Elijah. 1 Kings 17:16
***Gratitude Journal*** Today, I am grateful for the supportive community that is eager to share new cooking and baking techniques with the newbies out there. More and more young people are eager to learn the old-timey ways of doing things and that’s not only heartwarming…it’s reassuring that maybe these skills won’t be lost after all.