Spelt and Yogurt Biscuits

Now then, if you happen to wake up one Saturday morning feeling slightly in the manner of a hippie genius, might I suggest whipping up a batch of these beauties?  The three of us ate them to our heart's content for breakfast, along with lots of butter, jam, and copious amounts of fresh fruit.  We also had cup after cup of coffee (for mama and dada), and a nice glass of milk (for Emilia)**.  I then froze the rest of the batch thinking I would pull them out later in the week, but ended up yanking them from the freezer late Saturday night for breakfast on Sunday.  (What can I say?  Sometimes the idea of cooking breakfast sounds like a royal pain in the arse, particularly when it is late at night and breakfast is not actually that far off.)  So we had them Sunday morning as well, then I had the last one for lunch a few hours later, and that was the end of our yummy biscuits. They were incredibly easy to make -- the dough is mixed entirely in the food processor, which makes them even easier than the scone recipe from Baking with Julia (my old stand-by).  But more importantly, they were so so good.  Julia Child's recipe is hands down the best scone recipe I've come across, but I'm sick to death of it and/or bored to tears by it.  So spelt and yogurt biscuits are completely where it's at for the moment -- not to mention being a very welcome diversion.

The recipe is from Heidi Swanson's new cookbook Super Natural Every Day, and after thumbing through it last week (it is hot off the presses, you know), I settled on the recipe for Yogurt Biscuits to try first, and the recipe on the cover to try next.  (I am always quite interested to know which recipe one chooses to do first in a brand new cookbook.  Odd, but there it is.  Could probably do all kinds of psycho-analysis just with that bit of information.  Or maybe not.  But still interesting, nonetheless.)  Anyway, the cookbook looks marvelous and I am so excited about it.  Usually I just check out her book called Super Natural Cooking from the library, but there is always such a long wait for it.  So a couple of months ago I got on Amazon's site thinking I would just buy my own copy of the damn thing already, when I saw that Miss Swanson had a new cookbook coming out-- rather soon, no less.  I immediately did the pre-order for it  (oh, how I do love a  pre-order!), and then I sat back and waited.  And waited and waited. 

Anyway, that's neither here nor there.  The book came, it looks fabulous, and this is the first recipe I did.

**Getting the girl to drink milk has turned into a nightmare -- she will only drink it if she thinks it is Michael's.  Michael, or dada for short, must then act like he is on the verge of having a bonafide tizzy fit because she is drinking all of his milk.  And yes, this act has been going on for months now.  How long does she expect us to keep it up, I wonder?  Until she is eighteen and has moved out of the house?  For hell's sake already.

Spelt and Yogurt Biscuits

1 ¼ cups spelt flour or whole what pastry flour
1 ¼ cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1 ½ teaspoons fine-grain sea-salt (I used my regular kosher salt and will happily do it again because the sea-salt was too far in the back of the cupboard to be bothered)
1 tablespoon aluminum-free baking powder

½ cup unsalted butter, chilled and cut into cubes

1 ⅓ cup greek-style plain yogurt

Preheat the oven to 450ºF.  Place an ungreased baking sheet in the oven at the same time to preheat along with it. 

Combine the flours, salt, and baking powder in the bowl of the food processor.  Scatter the butter across the top and pulse about 20 times.  The mixture should look nice and sandy with a few lumps here or there.  Add the yogurt and pulse again until incorporated.  Go easily here because it is very easy to over-mix.  Gather the dough into a ball and place on a lightly floured surface.  Knead five times until the dough comes together.  Press the dough until it is about half an inch thick and a nice square.  Cut the dough in half.  Place one half on top of the other and press again.  Do this two more times -- cut in half, stack, and then press.  Add a bit more flour if necessary, just to avoid stickiness.  This stacking process will give the biscuits their nice flaky layers once they have baked, and goodness knows that's the whole point of biscuits.

Press (or roll) the dough into a ¾-inch rectangle.  (Any higher and the biscuits will bake tilted and wonky.)  Cut the dough into twelve equal biscuits.

Take the baking sheet out of the oven, quickly place the biscuits on it, spacing about 2 inches in-between, and then place back in the oven.  Bake for 15-18 minutes.  Both the tops and bottom will be nicely golden and look divine.  (Recipe from Super Natural Every Day by Heidi Swanson. Ten Speed Press, 2011.)