Just popping in quickly today to share with you some brilliance from somebody else’s oven. Specifically, Molly Gilbert’s. She’s the author of Sheet Pan Suppers
, the blogger/cooking instructor/recipe developer behind Dunk and Crumble, and the dreamer-upper of this simple-to-make, indulgent-to-eat biscuit and bacon breakfast.
The premise of Gilbert’s book is that we’ve too readily limited our idea of one-dish cooking to the pot. When I’m thinking up a simple meal, especially one for a dinner party, my mind definitely flies right to stew, chili, or curry. That’s where one-pot creativity tends to end, and for Gilbert, that was a problem. Here’s what happened when she went to cross the ease of the one-pot dinner with the elegance and satisfaction of roasting, baking, and broiling: one-pan cooking.
The sheet pan is one seriously underrated kitchen tool. Sheet pans combine pure ease (easy prep, easy process, easy cleanup) and interesting, sophisticated flavor. Beef stew? Try rack of lamb with herby breadcrumbs and buttered carrots. All on one pan, in the oven. No mess, no fuss. Boom! Dinner.
There are 120 recipes in here, for everyday dinners and party dinners, for meats like beef tenderloin cooked on a rack above leeks and fennel, for appetizers, for desserts, for brunches, and for vegetarians.
There’s a lot to make and a lot to inspire in Gilbert’s pages. But first up for me, there were bacon and biscuits, cooked, in a true display of scheduling expertise, on the same sheet pan. You start the bacon, make the biscuit dough, then cook the biscuits in bacon fat on the very same sheet pan until both bacon and biscuits are done. As they cooked together, they then get eaten on the same plate-topped with honey, as Gilbert suggests, or with honey butter, as I do.
**Recipe**
Biscuits & Bacon with Honey Butter
Barely adapted from Sheet Pan Suppers by Molly Gilbert
Serves 4 to 6
Note that the recipe calls for thick cut bacon - regular slices will cook too quickly for the biscuits
Ingredients
8 to 10 slices thick-cut bacon
2 cups all-purpose flour, plus extra for shaping
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons sugar
1 teaspoon kosher salt
6 tablespoons (3/4 stick) cold butter, cut in small cubes
3/4 cup cold buttermilk.
About 1 tablespoon honey
2 tablespoons softened butter
Preheat the oven to 400°F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
Lay the strips of bacon side by side on the sheet pan. Don’t overlap them, but don’t worry about leaving a lot of space either. Bake the bacon until it starts to crisp, about 10 minutes.
While the bacon takes its first turn in the oven, make the biscuit dough: whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, sugar, and salt in a medium-size bowl. Add the butter and use your fingertips or a pastry cutter to work it into the flour. Work quickly to avoid letting the butter get warm, and don’t worry about getting the butter equally sized.
Pour the buttermilk over the flour mixture and use a fork to bring everything together in a shaggy dough. Knead once or twice to pick up any stray pieces.
Lightly flour a work surface. Dump out the dough onto the surface and pat it into a 3/4-inch slab. Cut biscuits with a 2 1/2 inch round cutter, or use a knife to cut into squares of about the same saize.
Once the bacon has baked for 15 minutes, remove the pan from the oven. Shift the bacon around to make room for the biscuits, then quickly put them on the same tray and use a pastry brush to pick up some of the bacon grease on the pan and brush the tops of the biscuits.
Immediately return the pan to the oven. Bake, rotating the pan halfway through, until the bacon is charred at the edges and the biscuits are golden (watch carefully and remove any bacon slices that seem to be burning), about 20 minutes. While they cook, combine the honey and butter to taste in a little bowl.
Eat together, maybe sandwiched, maybe spread with honey butter or drizzled with honey.
