Yogurt Biscuits from Super Natural Every Day

When Mama makes biscuits, everyone's happy.

I made these yummy biscuits to go with this broccoli soup for dinner.  They're from Heidi Swanson's cookbook Super Natural Every Day. I like the book quite a bit, in fact, better than her last cookbook, Super Natural Cooking. She also has a nice blog called 101 Cookbooks. It's healthy, interesting stuff and despite the health bent, she seems very lovely and the site's not annoying at all. Anyway, the biscuits were fantastic and you should make some. They'd be a great breakfast with jam.

Makes 12 biscuits (She says 12, I say 16.)

1 ¼ cups spelt flour or whole wheat pastry flour (I used spelt)

1 ¼ cups unbleached all-purpose flour, plus more for kneading and rolling

1 ½ teaspoons fine-grain sea-salt (I used iodized)

1 tablespoon aluminum-free baking powder (I was delighted to find that my baking powder was, in fact, aluminum-free!)

½ cup unsalted butter, chilled and cut into cubes

1 ⅓ cup Greek-style plain yogurt (I used a combo of Greek and regular plain yogurt, about 50/50)

Preheat the oven to 450 with a rack in the middle of the oven. Place an ungreased baking sheet in the oven to preheat as well.

Combine the flours, salt, and baking powder in a food processor. Sprinkle the butter across the top of the dry ingredients and pulse about 20 times, or until the mixture resembles tiny pebbles. Add the yogurt and pulse a few times, or until the yogurt is just incorporated. Avoid overmixing, it’s fine if there are a few dry patches. Gather the dough into a ball and turn it out onto a lightly floured surface. Knead five times and press into an inch thick square. Cut in half and stack one on the other. Repeat two more times - flattening and stacking, then cutting. Add more all purpose flour to prevent sticking when needed. Press or roll out (I pressed) the dough into a 3/4 thick rectangle, but no thicker; if the dough is too tall, the biscuits will tilt and tip over while baking. Cut the dough into twelve equal biscuits.

Transfer the biscuits to the preheated baking sheet leaving 1/2 inch between each biscuit. Bake for 15-18 minutes, until the bottoms are deeply golden and the biscuits are cooked through. Serve with butter and jam.

The Much Requested Famous Beer Bread

I can't take any credit for this wondrous stuff, the lovely Stephanie Lieber found this on-line and introduced the Lunch Bunch (more on that later) to the wonder that is... beer bread.  


Since then, tens of friends have made this bread hundreds of time.  Julie Tippett Simon even dubbed it the "Sell My House" Beer Bread because she baked a loaf and finally (after years of trying) got two offers on her house THAT day! And her daughter's doll is even named "Beer Bread." The stuff is legendary!


It's also fast and infinitely flexible. Try cheddar and chives with Stella, or a nutty dark beer with some Gruyere. 


3 c flour
3 t baking powder
1 t salt
1/4 c sugar
12 oz bottle of beer
1/4 cup melted butter (olive oil?  vegan spread?)


Preheat oven to 375.
Sift (or not) dry ingredients into a large mixing bowl.
Pour beer over it and stir. No kneading necessary.
Transfer to a greased loaf pan.
Pour melted butter over the top.
Bake 50 minutes. Cool 15 minutes.

Banana Bread

My daughter has taken a peanut butter and banana sandwich for lunch pretty much every day for seven years running. Which means I always have a lot of bananas in the house and then sometimes she gets lucky and can take leftover pizza or pierogi for lunch and we end up with a backlog of too-ripe bananas. So I puree them with a stick blender and freeze them in one-cup or two-cup portions in freezer bags.  What to do with tons o' banana puree? The answer is always banana bread.  This version is Martha Stewart's lightened slightly due to the applesauce in lieu of some butter (thanks, Amy Spar) and the low fat Greek yogurt.

Makes two large loaves or six small loaves. This recipe can easily be halved.

1/4 pound (1 stick) butter, softened
1/2 c. unsweetened applesauce
2 c. sugar
4 eggs
3 c. unbleached all-purpose flour
2 t. baking soda
2 t. salt
2 c. mashed or pureed very ripe bananas
1 c. Greek yogurt or sour cream or a combo of the two (low-fat or no-fat is fine)
2 t. vanilla extract (I like Nielsen-Massey because boozy flavor)
1 c. mini chocolate chips

• Preheat the oven to 350F. Butter (or Pam for Baking) your pans of choice.
• With an electric mixer, cream the butter, applesauce and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs, beating well.
• Sift/mix (Who am I to judge?) the dry ingredients together and add to the butter mixture. Blend well at a low speed.  Add the banana puree, yogurt or sour cream, and vanilla. Mix well. Don't over mix.
• Fold in the chocolate chips and pour into the prepared pans.
• Bake one hour for large loaves and maybe about 45 minutes for small. Either way, they should be nicely browned and a cake tester should come out clean. Turn out on a rack to cool.

Indiana Steve's Snow Day Bread

A wonderful recipe given to me by friend/painter/potter/baker Steve Skinner who lives in New Carlisle, Indiana. I made this for the kids during the recent snowpocolypse so it was dubbed Snow Day Bread and it shall be called that forevermore.  It made amazing toast and the best grilled cheese of my life. Enough said.

8 c flour

3 ½  c water

2 T (+/-) salt

2 T dry yeast

1 T sugar

In a 4 cup measuring cup add hot water to yeast & sugar and let sit 5 minutes to activate yeast.

In a very large bowl combine and mix salt & flour.

Pour activated yeast water mix to center of flour and stir with large wooden spoon.

Knead until dough is moist and slightly sticky but doesn't stick to your hands. If it does stick add a more flour, but not too much at a time. Be sure to knead it in gradually.

Pre-heat your oven to its lowest temp and then turn it off.

Cover dough in the large mixing bowl with another large bowl or platter so the dough doesn't dry as it rises. Let the dough rise about 45 minutes in the warm oven.

Grease two 9 x 5 in. bread pans with butter.

Remove the dough from the oven and with a wooden spatula, roll the dough onto your counter top. The counter top will not need to be dusted with flour if the dough is the correct consistency. If it sticks to the counter top, dust it lightly with flour and roll it into a large loaf. Cut the loaf into halves and place each half into the greased pans.

If necessary, pre-heat the oven again to its lowest setting and again turn it off. Place the pans of bread dough into the warm oven and let rise 20 minutes or until the dome of the dough rises to slightly higher then the tops of the bread pans.

Turn the oven on to 400 degrees and bake the dough from 20 - 30 minutes until it is golden brown. I prefer a darker shade of golden brown, but it's your preference whether lighter or darker. Remove from oven. The bread should slide right out of the pans.