Go ahead. Laugh at the title. Hate if you're gonna hate. Ask me why I bother. Ask me how they can be any good. Answer is, I don't know. That's what I'm here to find out.
I've started baking.
Those who have known me a long time will likely find this hilarious. What is really funny though, is that I really want to make delicious gluten-free, vegan baked goods so I don't feel guilty when I eat them, and really, it's totally possible because it's science. Baking is precise. You need certain amounts of wet, dry, and fat to make something light and flavorful, right. I just don't want that "something" to make me hate myself when I'm wheezing in the bed, so! I'm tried muffins, cakes, cookies. All with varying degrees of success and failure. So now we move onto the real test...
Gluten-Free Vegan Biscuits.
There were lots of recipes online, for vegan or gluten-free...and most of them were posted by people who I'm sure are lovely and dedicated bakers, but were admittedly not southern AND thought these were "probably" as good as real biscuits. I want more. I want better. I have a mission. So I took the parts of several recipes that made sense with the ingredients I had on hand and got started.
No lie, this first batch was in many ways a failure, but I'm not giving up. The texture was soft and flaky. Not dry, not crumbly. However...they didn't rise.
Full disclosure - I have never made good biscuits. Ever. They are always dry. Too much or not enough salt. And hard as a hockey puck because I work the dough too much. So I thought, maybe I don't make soft delicious full-fat, floury biscuits well, because I'm meant to make soft delicious alterna-biscuits well. So with these new ingredients, I have a whole new set of problems to solve. These biscuits were not hard as hockey pucks or heavy like door stops, in fact, in some ways, the texture is the best of the biscuits I've made. But to say they didn't rise is actually an understatement. These spread out. They are more like...biscuit cookies.
Oh, they're real odd. No doubt about it. In a blind taste test, I'm not sure I'd even know it was a biscuit. And I didn't do anything fancy to them cause I wanted to know what the basic, basic biscuit would be like. It turns out the basic, basic biscuit is quite bland. It's kinda like the water cracker of biscuits so it is not a biscuit you enjoy on it's own, BUT as a "vehicle" biscuit for my country ham...
not too shabby.
Once you fold it over...
...and you need not worry about why my country ham biscuits are vegan...fake butter and milk are one thing, and I eat my share of garden patties, but country ham has no substitute. Pork is sacred.
More soon.
xoxosara
