Using Leftover Dairy from Cheese, Pt. 1: Baking

So obviously, I have previously used some of my leftover dairy stuff to make delicious honey corn bread/muffins, and they were pretty delicious. However, I still had a ton of that stuff leftover and little idea of what to do with it. So...more baking! This time, Biscuits (courtesy of my all-time favorite, Alton Brown)!

Once again, I was facing a situation where I didn't have certain supplies on hand, so I improvised. My recipe is as follows:

2 cups flour
1 packet active dry yeast, proofed*
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
4 tablespoons butter
1/2 cup buttermilk, chilled (if you have any)
1/2 cup leftover dairy stuff (1 cup if you're out of the buttermilk at this point)

* Proofing just means letting the packet of yeast sit in a bowl with a 1/4 cup warm water and 1 tbsp sugar for about 15 minutes. It starts to get all poofy.

Preheat your oven to 450 degrees. Toss in all the dry ingredients, stir, then cut up the butter into fairly small pieces, and rub it into the dry stuff, until you feel like it's pretty evenly distributed. Try not to allow large chunks of butter. Then add the buttermilk, dairy stuff, and your proofed yeast. Mix it all together and turn it out onto a cutting board dusted with corn meal (I would have used flour except I used it all in the biscuits. go figure). Turn the dough about 5 or 6 times, then roll them into balls, put them on your baking sheet, and toss them in the oven. They should be done in about 15 minutes, or once they start to brown on the top!


(only an "after" picture because my hands were literally caked with dough)

This experiment was a bit less of a success than I had hoped. The dough was EXTREMELY wet due to the yeast and extra water, the corn meal added a bit of a weird crunchy texture, and overall the biscuits turned out a little flat, probably due to the lack of baking powder (I need to buy baking powder, obviously). However, they still taste pretty good and complimented the soup I made pretty well.

I'm going to keep experimenting with baking in the near future because I am extremely uncomfortable with it. I don't understand how the ingredients effect the texture or flavor (obvious with my attempts to sub yeast for baking powder...completely changes the texture), and I feel like I need to follow the recipe meticulously. It ends up being a lot of work (in my mind) and extremely intimidating. I'm going to change that. I hope my experiments encourage you to try and tackle the areas of cooking you feel uncomfortable with as well.