“Read the recipe?” you ask. “That’s your advice? You’re a worse cook than I thought.”
Yes, and you are completely justified in calling me ‘amateur’ for making that mistake. But I made it. It happens. It will likely happen again no matter how much I tell myself over and over to ‘read the recipe.’
So I’m writing this story about a lovely breakfast ruined for one reason. I didn’t read the recipe.
The thing is, I thought I did.
It was going to be a nice, quiet Sunday, and I wanted to start it with an equally nice breakfast. Sarah brought up the idea to make biscuits, which we hadn’t done in awhile.
The last time we made biscuits they came out okay. We had an Alton Brown recipe for southern-style biscuits that, while tasty, came out kind of flat. I think our baking powder might have been a bit old, but it’s just as likely that I rolled them out too thin.
So it was almost serendipity that while perusing the internet on Saturday I came across a biscuit recipe from Michael Ruhlman that made me wish Sunday morning had arrived.
These biscuits were flaky and tender and waiting to be pulled apart layer by layer. Butter would line up from miles away to spread themselves on these biscuits.
So I read the recipe…or so I thought.
Sunday morning arrived, and I was ready to make a breakfast masterpiece. I made the dough, put it in the fridge for an hour, then rolled it, cut it, and was ready to pop them in the oven.
Except I wasn’t supposed to cut them and put them in the oven. I was supposed to re-wrap the dough and put it in the fridge for another hour.
Oops.
I made the mistake of getting about two-thirds of the way through the recipe and assuming I knew the rest. Once I took it out of the fridge and rolled it out, why wouldn’t I just cut it and put it in the oven? That made sense to me. Apparently reading the recipe didn’t make sense.
I don’t remember why I decided to re-read that part of the recipe, but by the time I discovered my error we were not going to wait another hour. So we took our chance and put them in the oven.
The Result of Impatience
Again, they tasted good but came out flat. Only this time I was sure it was because I rolled them out too thin. They definitely weren’t flaky enough, and that was certainly because I didn’t re-refrigerate and roll again as instructed.
I will definitely try this recipe again. In the meantime, I’ve got a new reminder in the kitchen:
Rule 1 – See Above
