Cheddar Biscuits

Cheese biscuits often sound better than they taste. Those we have baked have generally come out of the oven dense as a brick and gummy to boot. The cheese appears to weigh down the dough and prevent a proper rise. We wanted to master this simple recipe and make cheese-flavored biscuits with an airy texture and light crumb. Here’s what we discovered:

Test Kitchen Discoveries

• Add cheese to cream biscuits, which are prepared simply from flour and heavy cream leavened with baking powder.
• Knead the dough only long enough to incorporate the dry ingredients and cream. Overworking the dough will make the biscuits tough.
• Choose dry, strong-flavored cheeses to flavor the biscuits. Wet or particularly rich cheeses turned the biscuits gummy during testing. Add most of the cheese to the dough just before adding the cream and sprinkle the remainder across the top halfway through baking so that it browns, which will intensify its flavor.
• Bake the biscuits immediately after preparing them to make the most of the leavener.