Hedonia

Not bad for a Yankee

Biscuits are the easiest thing in the world to make and among the hardest to make well. To achieve the perfectly, ethereally fluffy, flaky, crusty, buttery texture takes skill, patience and above all else a light hand.

I'm not purporting that I have personally reached biscuit nirvana, but at least I'm having fun trying.

I've been using the Alton Brown recipe as a baseline, but you know as well as I do that I don't follow instructions very well. Oh, I swap things out here and there, just sort of wing it now and then.

Saturday morning, no bread in the house but more preserves than you can shake a stick at, biscuits were the order of the day. Everything in stock except ... no buttermilk. And I don't enter a grocery store until I've had my coffee. So lessee ... a dribble of 2% and some Greek yogurt. That's sort of like buttermilk, right?

I tell you what, it was good enough for government work. The biscuits maybe didn't rise as much as I'd hoped (I think our baking powder may be losing its oomph), but the biscuits came out soft and fluffy, with a satisfyingly crunchy crust.

Not bad for a Yankee.

City Bakery

When one trusted source refers you to a place when you're visiting New York, you put it on the list. When two do it, you make it an imperative. When it happens to be two blocks from your office, you go twice. Such was the case for City Bakery.

I was made aware of City Bakery by newfound friend (by way of David, with whom I just dined at Tía Pol) Thomas Locke Hobbes. A Bay Area native but longtime New York resident (and now transplant back to his hometown), Thomas advised that City Bakery produced the best chocolate chip cookies. Ever. And then the always engaging and informative Shuna commented that I simply must go there for the pretzel croissant. As far as I know they are not in cahoots with each other, or the bakery.

So. Pretzel croissant, eh?

Ho yeah. Explosively flaky on the surface and fluffy soft on the inside. Big time buttery yet never greasy or dense. And just salty enough to highlight the sweetness of the dough. This is a very dangerous thing indeed.