Farm Ferments: Audrey’s Scrumptious Sourdough Biscuits

Please slather me with jam and whipped cream

With summer’s heat, Audrey‘s a happy culture and that means lots of delightfully sour, bubbly starter for making baked goods…like these sourdough biscuits!

Who could say “no” to a hot fresh biscuit? And when they’re this easy to make, you can keep them on hand. Biscuits make a great bun for sandwiches or burgers – I like to spread on some cream cheese and then top it with baked wild-caught salmon for a tasty and filling salmon sandwich. Other quick sammie options include peanut butter and banana slices or Tofurky deli slices (but not the “ham” ones because they contain carrageenan) and cheese.

It begins with a healthy sourdough starter: a regularly fed culture kept at a temperature the culture likes. Audrey is fed a ration of flour and water daily, and we keep her closer to the air conditioning in the summer, when the kitchen tends to heat up, or on top of the refrigerator (where it’s warmer) in cold weather.

She tells us when she’s unhappy through visual cues like fewer bubbles and/or olfactory cues like a change in smell (more sharp, sometimes with a hint of acetone). When she’s not feeling her active self, the bread she produces tends to be less airy, with a tougher, denser crumb. Not ideal.

When Audrey’s happy, we’re all happy…

Back to the recipe: the dry ingredients are mixed (or sifted) together, butter is cut into the dry ingredients, then the sourdough starter is added. The dough is rolled out, kneaded, cut, and baked for about 15 minutes. The product: flaky, buttery biscuits that are crusty on the outside on tender inside. Yum!

As with other sourdough baked goods we’ve made, these biscuits stayed mold-free for several days in a container on the counter. Even without preservatives, we can keep and enjoy these soft biscuits at room temperature rather than having to store them in the fridge.

Want to make these, yourself? We used this easy recipe. And yes, that is a wide mouth Mason jar being used to cut the biscuits…works better than our metal biscuit cutters!