Buttermilk Biscuits I

As part of my quest to perfect my breakfast repertoire, I'm trying to reproduce the Bojangles biscuit recipe.

I've made a few batches of buttermilk biscuits over the last few months, but now I'm going to record my efforts via blog.

Today, I made this recipe -- http://www.cdkitchen.com/recipes/recs/330/Bojangles_Biscuits16768.shtml. I made it a few weeks ago, and it was fairly mediocre. I tried to tweak the recipe a bit today.

Here are my ingredients and tools:

STEP 1: Mix together dry ingredients

STEP 2: Cut in shortening -- I have read in several places that using very cold shortening is a key to good biscuits, so I put it in the freezer for about 15 min; probably wasn't long enough freeze it, though.

STEP 3: Pour in buttermilk -- I bought a quart of buttermilk, and the 1.25 cups required for the recipe used about 1/3 of it. This website says it'll keep for 7-10 days opened, so I can use another 1/3 for next weekend.

STEP 4: Mix together wet and dry ingredients, pour out onto floured counter, and knead a few times

STEP 5: Flatten with rolling pin to about 3/4" -- Unlike previous attempts, I did NOT flatten and fold the dough several times to avoid making layers since Bojangles's biscuits seem not to have any layers.

STEP 6: Cut out biscuits -- I used the 1 3/4" cutter (the fourth largest in Maki's set).

STEP 7: Put biscuits on baking pan -- I forgot to pre-heat the oven, so after cutting out the biscuits and putting them on the pan, I popped them into the freezer while the oven warmed up.

STEP 8: Into a 450 deg oven for 10 minutes

STEP 9: I pulled the biscuits out after 10 minutes (2 minutes early) to baste their tops with butter, then back into the oven for 3 minutes.

STEP 10: Then out for eating.

The tops weren't quite as golden as I wanted:

And the bottoms were a little toastier than I wanted:

So next week, I'll bake them for 6 minutes, pull them out and baste them with butter, then pop them back into the oven for another 6 minutes. In fact, I'll put them in upside down at first.