Day one hundred thirty

Chicken Pot Pie with Buttermilk Biscuits

Secrets to make great biscuits.

Two days left before the externship. Today was the last day I worked at the school this year (I will return in January after the externship). There is a strange feeling, it seems I am going to miss the school unless during the externship will be extremely busy. Will see.

Today our team made a chicken pot pie with buttermilk biscuits. The idea of the dish is strange for me. A chicken pot pie is a soup, yes it is a thick soup, what's  the point to put biscuits in that soup? This I can't understand. I would rather keep them on
the side, so the biscuits will not soak in the soup and have a chance to become soggy. Again, it's just me, many people like it the way we served.

Biscuits - I love them if they were made right.

We used the basic recipe.

Buttermilk  Biscuits.
Makes 40 biscuits.

Ingredients:
3 lb 8 oz all-purpose flour 
4 oz sugar 
3 oz baking powder 
¾ oz salt 
1 lb butter, cubed, cold 
8 oz eggs 
1 lb 10 oz buttermilk 
Egg Wash, as needed 

Method:
1) Line a sheet pan with parchment paper. 
2) Combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. 
3) Using your fingertips, gently rub the butter into the dry ingredients until the mixture has the appearance of a coarse meal. 
4) Combine the eggs and buttermilk. Add to the flour mixture, tossing to combine. 
5) Roll out the dough on a lightly floured work surface to a thickness of 1 in and cut out the biscuits with a 2-in cutter. Place the biscuits on the prepared pan and lightly brush with egg wash. 
6) Bake at 425°F/218°C until golden brown, about 15 minutes (check after 10 minutes). 
7) Transfer the biscuits to wire racks and cool completely.

Here are the secrets:
Regardless the recipe you use for your biscuits, these are the general guidelines to make them really good.
1) do not over work the dough, you do not want gluten to develop, so when you add liquid ingredients to the dry one, mix just to combine.
2) when you work flour with butter you want pea size chunks of butter (really small) which will create pockets of air when you bake them and rise the biscuits. Do not mix butter with flour for perfectly smooth mixture.
3) when you cut biscuits, use dough cutter and cut straight down. Do not rotate cutter (biscuits will rise unevenly).
4) when you place them on the baking sheet pan, place them in touching each other (this way they will rise up as there is no room to spread out).

With our soup we were almost late. Just 30 minutes before service some people realized that the soup suppose to be ready by that time. So we had to do it very quickly. Sweat mirepoix (onion, celery, carrots), add roux (flour fried in butter), and then fortified chicken stock. Cook a bit. At the normal circumstances we should have put potatoes in the soup and simmer for 15-20 minutes. Today we had no time for this. So potatoes was steamed in a combi oven for about 5 minutes (by that time it was ready, as it was cut for a medium dice) and added to the soup almost cooked. 

We were ready just in time for the service. Biscuits were great, light and fluffy. Soup was good.