Cracked Pepper Biscuits Recipes

Steps:

• Preheat oven to 425°F. Grease cake pans or baking dish with 1 Tbsp. melted butter.
• Combine all-purpose flour, cake flour, baking powder, pepper, kosher salt, and baking soda in a large bowl. Add shortening and 1/2 pound softened butter. Using your hands or a fork, mix just until mixture is coarse and mealy. Stir in buttermilk just until a shaggy dough forms.
• Divide dough into 16 heaping 1/3-cup portions. Place 7 around the perimeter and 1 in the center of each cake pan (or nestle all 16 into baking dish). Brush biscuits with remaining 3 Tbsp. melted butter, sprinkle with sea salt, and bake until puffed and golden brown, 35-40 minutes. Let cool in pan 10 minutes. Invert onto a wire rack, then reinvert. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Steps:

• Place the butter in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment and mix until creamy. (**I think this is where personal preference and maybe even altitude will effect the outcome of these crackers. I started out with 1 stick of butter, then blended all the other ingredients together. The "dough" was too crumbly and looked like a struesel topping that you would put on top of muffins or a coffee cake. The one stick of butter is what Ina calls for in her recipe. I think this is a typo. I added another 1/2 stick of butter to the flour mixture, and then beat it with the paddle attachment on my mixer. This is when the "dough" balled up and looked right. So, I think this recipe needs between 1 stick and 1 1/2 sticks. You might even get by with 1 1/4 sticks.).
• Add the Parmesan, flour, salt, thyme and pepper and combine.
• Dump the dough on a lightly floured board and roll into a 13-inch long log.
• Wrap the log in plastic wrap and place in the freezer for 30 minutes to harden.
• Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
• Cut the log crosswise into 1/4 to 1/2-inch thick slices.
• Place the slices on a sheet pan and bake for 22-25 minutes.
• **Cook time does not include freezing the dough for between 15-30 minutes (mine were hard enough to easily cut at 15 minutes).

Steps:

• Preheat oven to 425° F. and lightly grease a large baking sheet.
• Into a bowl sift together flour and baking powder. With a fork stir in sugar, 1 1/2 tablespoons pepper, and table salt. Add cream and stir to form a soft dough. On a lightly floured surface with floured hands knead dough gently 8 times.
• Melt butter and cool.
• Pat out dough into a 9-inch square (about 1/2 inch thick). With a rectangular cutter (about 2 3/4 by 1 3/4 inches) dipped in flour or with a sharp knife cut out as many rectangles as possible. Dip tops of biscuits in butter and arrange, buttered sides up, 1/2 inch apart on baking sheet. Gather scraps into a ball. Pat out dough and make more biscuits in same manner. Sprinkle biscuits with coarse salt and remaining 1/2 tablespoon pepper.
• Bake biscuits in middle of oven until golden and cooked through, about 15 minutes. Biscuits may be made 6 hours ahead and cooled completely before being kept, wrapped well, at room temperature. Just before serving, reheat biscuits in a 350° F. oven until just warm, about 5 minutes.