Time for another recipe for ministry!

I’ve found a great recipe for a bread to make for a church dinner. Angel biscuits!

Several times, as I’m cooking for a group of people, I’ve thought that biscuits would be a nice accompaniment. But biscuits are something you make last minute and when you’re cooking for company, a church dinner, or a group of more than six people, who has time to do anything last minute? Plus, at least for me, biscuits are a little hard to double the recipe and make for a group larger than six people. Then I found this recipe for Angel biscuits.

The beauty of this recipe is that since it takes yeast, it’s made ahead, allowed to rise for one to one and a half, and then baked right before you need them. It also makes about 24 biscuits and is a lot easier to mix together than that much traditional biscuit dough. I thought they would taste more like traditional yeast raised rolls but they really do taste much more like biscuits.

The recipe says you can also refrigerate this dough up to three days. That means, you could take a little bit of dough out at a time and make just a few biscuits if you like.

Full disclosure: my recipe is adapted from a 1986 paperback edition of a Betty Crocker cookbook.

Now to find my jar of honey. Winnie-the Pooh, where did you put it?

Angel Biscuits

• 1 pkg dry yeast
• 1/3 cup warm water (105-115 degrees)
• 5 cups flour
• 1 cup shortening
• ¼ cup sugar
• 3 tsp baking powder
• 2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 ¾ cups buttermilk

Soften the yeast in warm water. In a large mixing bowl, measure out and stir together the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and baking soda. Cut in the shortening until the mixture resembles fine crumbs. Stir in the yeast mixture and buttermilk until just combined and dough leaves side of the bowl. Sprinkle flour on your work surface, turn dough out onto flour. Knead about 20 strokes until dough holds together, sprinkling with flour if dough is too sticky. Pat or roll out to ½ inch thickness. Using a 2 inch biscuit cutter, cut out biscuits, placing an inch apart on an ungreased baking sheet. Reroll remaining scraps and cut out rest of biscuits.

Cover baking sheets with a clean kitchen towel. Let rise 1 to 1 ½ hours or until double in size. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Bake biscuits 12-14 minutes or until bottoms of biscuits are a golden brown. Remove immediately from baking sheets.

Do ahead tip:You can place the dough in a lightly greased mixing bowl, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate up to 3 days.