Cheddar Bacon (or Facon) Biscuits

Ingredients:

6 oz. Bacon, diced
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 Tbs. baking powder
2 tsp. sugar
3/4 tsp. freshly ground pepper
1 stick cold unsalted butter, cut or smooshed into small pieces
2 Tbs. melted butter for later
1/4 cup grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese
3/4 cup shredded Extra-Sharp Cheddar Cheese
7 oz. Buttermilk

Preheat the oven to 425. If you’re using real bacon, fry the bacon until it is crisp, crisp, crisp. Drain on a paper towel. Reserve some of the fat to prep the pan bottom. If you’re not using real bacon, you can prep the pan with melted butter.

I used Morningstar Veggie Bacon Strips, pictured above. Finely chop the bacon or use my Father’s, soon to be patented, method: death by many scissor cuts.

In a large bowl, add the flour, baking powder, sugar and pepper. Notice my Father’s perfect pepper grinding stance? I was thankful to have his help on this recipe.

Cut in cold butter that you’ve smooshed and generally made into smaller, workable pieces.

This means to literally take two knives and cut, cut, cut the butter back and forth until it’s in pea sized chunks.

Then use fingers to pinch the crumbs into disks. Don’t overwork the dough. Stir in the cheeses and the bacon.

Stir in buttermilk until the dough just comes together.

On a floured work surface (I used my clean kitchen countertop), roll out the dough into a 9 x 11 rectangle.

In theory, you’d be using a pie roller thingy but I didn’t have one. A liter of sparkling water did the trick. Then, fold this into thirds, rotate 90 degrees and roll out another 9 x 11 rectangle. Do this again but roll into a 7 x 9 rectangle this time. You’re looking to make layers (for an extra light and fluffy biscuit).

Using a floured biscuit cutter (we didn’t have one so we used a wine glass), cut out the biscuits.

You want them to be right about 2 1/2″ in diameter. Re-roll the scraps to cut out more biscuits. Brush the tops of all the biscuits with melted butter. Bake for 20 minutes. Check them. Do they need more time?

You can easily bake up to 25 minutes depending on your oven. This recipe makes around 12 – 15 biscuits. The biscuits are delicious! Ours came out a bit salty so I’ve taken out the salt in the recipe; the bacon and cheese have a lot of salt in them. But, if you find them not salty enough, the original recipe from Williams Sonoma called for 1/2 tsp of salt. I hope you enjoy these yummy little butter bombs. They are delicious and very worth the effort.