Flaky Biscuits

Ingredients:

• 3 cups all purpose flour

• 3/4 tsp baking soda

• 2 1/4 tsp baking powder

• 1 tbsp sugar

• 1 tsp salt

• 10 tbsp cold unsalted butter

• 1 1/4 cup milk

1. Heat oven to 450°F. In a large bowl, combine flour, baking soda, baking powder, sugar and salt.

2. Cut butter into cubes. Add to flour mixture and using your fingers, fork, or a pastry blender, work butter into flour until it resembles coarse crumbs.

3. Drizzle milk over flour mixture to evenly distribute while stirring with a fork until a cohesive dough begins to form.

4. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Sprinkle with flour. Gather dough into a ball pressing to bind.

5. Place dough on parchment and flatten into a 6-by-10-inch rectangle. Lift short end of dough and fold in half to form a 6-by-5-inch rectangle. Gently flatten once again to a 6-by-10 rectangle. Fold in half and flatten to a 6-inch square.

6. Using a sharp knife, cut dough into thirds both vertically and horizontally to get a total of 9 biscuits.

7. Bake for 15 to 17 minutes until golden brown. Serve warm.

Yields: 9 biscuits

Notes&Tips:

• These biscuits are so delicious you'll want to keep eating them. They are also "mile high" with wonderful flaky layers.

• The key to these flaky biscuits is folding the dough onto itself instead of just flattening it and cutting out the biscuits.

• I used almond milk in this recipe, but for those who consume cow's milk, feel free to use whole milk or buttermilk. Also, brushing the tops of the biscuits with milk or melted butter is optional.

• If you prefer to have round biscuits, certainly use a round cookie cutter to cut out biscuits.

• Biscuits can be used for every meal: as a breakfast item with eggs or simply spreading with butter or jam or drizzling some honey over it; for lunch make a sandwich using your favorite lunch meat and some vegetables; use with butter and serve as a side with roasts or grill meat or stew and with fried chicken.

• I baked these biscuits using the convection feature of my oven and set it at 425°F. Instructions to use my oven says to set the convection feature 25° less than the normal non-convection baking temperature. If your oven has a convection feature you may want to try it out if you haven't yet.