The Internet is great for finding recipes, but sometimes, there is nothing like getting a cooking magazine in the mail. I don’t remember how, but I ordered a subscription to Cooking Light magazine, and a few days ago, we got the latest issue. I decided to make use of it and look through it for dinner ideas. I came across the toasted quinoa soup that I mentioned in my quiche post and also came across two recipes that I decided to try together: whole-grain spelt and cornmeal biscuits and beef and barley stew. The beef and barley stew was amazing; I think this was mostly due to Josh’s fresh veggies from the garden and my dad’s grilled tri-tip that I used. The spelt and cornmeal biscuits were a big hit with my whole family… except for me!
Josh and I love cooking and baking with alternative flours. We think it’s fun, even when the results aren’t to our liking. So when I happened across spelt flour, I had to get it, even if it did sit in our cabinet for a while before I found a way to use it!
The biscuits were very, very crumbly! In fact, my daughter enjoyed smashing her biscuit into crumbs and eating the crumbs. Silly girl!
I don’t think this was the fault of the recipe though. At some point in the past, I ordered cornmeal through Amazon Pantry. The problem is, somehow I ordered MEDIUM grain cornmeal, four 12 ounce bags of them. At first, when I saw the bags, I thought that it was great I would have cornmeal to last me awhile. Then, I tried baking with the cornmeal, and the cornmeal was so coarse that I was gritting my teeth on it! I use the cornmeal now just because I need to, but I certainly don’t like baking with it very much.
I’ve tried “chopping” it to a finer grain using a food chopper, but it didn’t help.
Anyway, that cornmeal is what I used in these biscuits. And that is most likely why I didn’t like them. And probably also why they were so crumbly. So these biscuits would turn out great with a different cornmeal. Then again, my family loved these. My oldest even said he liked these better than the plain drop biscuits I had made two days ago! So as Josh told me, maybe I’m just weird!
-Lynn