Cooking biscuits in a wood-fired cook stove

Last night about one hour before my guests arrived for dinner I made up a batch of biscuits in the wood cook-stove.  It was my first time baking inside the stove.  Maine Man was rather leery of my last minute preparations.  I believe his exact words were, “I can just stop by the store and pick up some Grand biscuits.”    Sounded like a challenge to me…so I looked through Woodstove Cookery handbook and didn’t find what I was looking for.  Then I googled “baking biscuits in a wood cook-stove” once again I found zip.  I decided to just find a basic recipe and alter as I needed.  The worst case scenario we’d be eating strawberry shortcakes without the biscuits…..I’m a risk taker!

If you’re cooking with a regular stove I would cook these at 450 degrees for approx 10 minutes give or take.

I decided to make the dough in my food processor and it worked perfectly.

• 2 cups flour
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 4 teaspoons baking powder
• 3/4 teaspoon salt

Pulse together in processor for a few seconds.

• Add 2 tablespoons of cold butter (I cut it up into smaller chunks)
• Add 2 tablespoons of shortening (separated into smaller pieces as well)

Pulse together until mixture is a crumbly texture

• Add 1 cup of buttermilk (I did not have any buttermilk on hand so I used 1 cup milk w/ 1 T. of vinegar and let it sit for 5 minutes)

Make a well in the center of the flour mixture and add milk.  Pulse until mixed well, dough will be sticky.  Toss onto floured counter and fold over 6 times.  Flatten out into a 1″ deep circle. You can use a can or a glass to cut dough into biscuits.  Grease the sheet and cook in the cook-stove (it was between 200-275 degrees) until golden brown.  In this case it took approximately 30 minutes.  The shortcakes were a big hit.  Glad I didn’t cave under pressure. I will definitely cook these up again!