During Covid 19 are you finding it hard to find special low fodmap baking ingredients?
I am. I will go to three or four stores just to find special GF flour for making low fodmap southern biscuits. Why? I absolutely have to have biscuits on Sunday morning to hold the wonderful sausage gravy that my daughter and son-in-law will expect when they come for brunch. Not that either of them have IBS, but I do. So I just make secret changes that make my biscuits low fodmap and IBS safe. If either of them has noticed, they certainly have never said or ever left a single crumb while gobbling up my entire batch of biscuits. lol.
From Southern Biscuits to Low Fodmap
Here is an adaptation of a biscuit recipe I found on the Internet. I want to give credit to where I found it, but sadly I can’t recall where. This recipe is similar to the one I used so often when we were living in Virginia. But now I try to substitute King Arthur Measure for Measure or some other GF flour for AP flour, and I always use alternative milk for buttermilk.
When I called the King Arthur company, their baker said I could follow all my own recipe instructions from using regular flour, and the biscuits would turn out fine. Butter is already low fodmap, but if you can’t eat it, substitute a shortening that you can tolerate, like Crisco or solid coconut oil. For milk, use an alternative milk. I use lactose free milk here, but I often use almond/coconut or rice milk, if I am out of lactose free milk.
These biscuits are not too rich, but they have a lovely homemade quality. They taste scrumptious with butter and jam, and hold up under a mound of delicious sausage gravy. The fun thing about them is the way they split themselves as if they are fork split before baking, which they are not. lol.
After living almost 30 years in the south, I cannot give up homemade biscuits with sausage gravy. While I will always love Jimmy Dean sausage, as an IBS person, I have to swap out Jimmy Dean sausage for a safer version, so I make my own. How? See below.
Make Your Own Low Fodmap Sausage
I swap ground pork for ground turkey (93% lean) that I season myself to make it into sausage meat. (poultry seasoning, sage, pinch of nutmeg, sprinkle of paprika for color).
Compare My Biscuits with Joanna Gaines
I use far less butter and shortening in the biscuits. Joanna Gaines’s (Magnolia Table) biscuit recipe uses 3 sticks of butter and 1 and 1/2 cups of buttermilk. Granted her recipe makes double the amount of mine, but that is still 1 and 1/2 sticks of butter for ten biscuits. This recipe uses 8 tablespoons or 1 stick of butter. That is 1/3 fewer fat calories.
Buttermilk is High in FODMAPs
Instead of using buttermilk, my recipe is made with either lactose free milk or an alternative milk of your choice. If you want that tang of buttermilk, you can turn your own milk into buttermilk by adding 1 or 2 tsps. of white or cider vinegar to the milk and letting it sit 5 minutes until the milk curdles. It works exactly like buttermilk in any recipe. Most of you probably already know this, but as a former professor, I can’t help myself from explaining too much. Forgive me and make these safe and yummy biscuits.
INGREDIENTS
2 cups King Arthur Measure for Measure GF Flour (or AP flour if wheat is not an issue)
*or other GF flour that has measure for measure properties. (KA says you can substitute theirs and continue with the recipe mixing, cutting, rolling with good results)
1 Tbsp. Sugar
1 Tbsp. Baking Powder
1 tsp. Salt
8 Tbsp. butter, diced into cubes and kept cold until using
3/4 cups 2% lactose free milk (or any alternative milk)
Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. Cover a baking sheet with parchment paper.
In a stand mixer mixing bowl, combine the flour, sugar, salt and baking powder using a whisk.
Fit the mixer with the paddle. Add the cold diced butter or other shortening cubes. Setting the mixer on low, run the mixer for 3 to 5 minutes or until the flour butter mixture looks like cornmeal. Turn off the mixer.
Using a wooden spoon, make a well in the middle of the flour mixture to make room for the milk. Turn the mixer back on low and slowly pour in the milk until the mixture forms a soft dough.
Gather up the dough and place it on a lightly floured board. Knead the dough a few times until it comes together and you can form a ball of dough and it is fairly smooth.
By the way, if you don’t have a stand mixer, you can mix these up in a bowl using a pastry cutter for the butter and flour until it is the size of cornmeal and then slowly adding in the milk using a wooden spoon. Then follow the above directions.
Place waxed paper or parchment paper under the dough and rest it on the board. Tear off another piece of parchment or wax paper and place it on top of the dough.
With a rolling pin, roll out the biscuit dough to the height you like. I like a bit higher than 1/4″. Using a biscuit cutter or other round form like a glass dipped in flour, cut out biscuits and place them on a parchment or foil lined baking sheet. Roll up the scraps and roll out again, cutting biscuits until all the dough is used up.
Place the biscuits in a 450° oven and bake for 10 – 18 minutes or until the biscuits are golden brown on top and on the bottom. Remove from the oven and cool on racks until cool, or serve them warm. See how they fork split themselves? So handy. lol. This recipe makes between 8 to 12 biscuits depending on how thick or thin you cut them.
I also freeze them on a rack until frozen and then place in a large plastic freezer bag for whenever I want a biscuit. They keep for 3 months in the freezer.
