Sometimes you get inspired in cooking and decide to try something new. I had two kids to feed on a Saturday morning, various jams in the refrigerator, and decided to try something new - the biscuit weave.
I thought that maybe I was onto something. I had made bread weaves before, which turn out spectacular, but take a couple of days to do. You need to make a sweet bread dough with milk, butter, yeast, flour, and some other ingredients. Then you need to put it in the refrigerator overnight. The next morning you then roll it out and form it as desired. You can add butter, raisins, and cinnamon sugar and make some great cinnamon rolls this way. You can make a jam braid where you put some preserves in the middle then criss-cross the dough over it in a weave. When it bakes up, it is beautiful.
This morning I thought I had figured out a way to make a braid in just one morning - I would make the dough from biscuit dough, which does not need to rise or sit in the refrigerator overnight, then proceed the same way. I pulled out my shortening and self-rising flour, and within about 10 minutes I had my biscuit dough ready. I then pressed it out on a baking sheet, cut slits to criss-cross for the lattice, and spread a couple different kinds of jam into the middle. I laced it up and it looked great. I threw it into a 450 degree oven and set the timer for eight minutes - the time required to make biscuits.
When it came out it looked great. The dough had puffed and risen and formed a great golden brown. The jam leaked out a bit, but that was no big deal. Just a bit of a mess to clean off of the cookie sheet. But then I tried to cut it.
Cuisinart CBK-100 2 LB Bread Maker
The dough near the jam was raw. It had cooked on the outside just fine, but the part touching the jam stayed too cool due to the jam, and due to being buried deep inside, and it didn't cook. With biscuits, you hit them with a lot of heat and they cook quickly. But they can't be too thick or the center will not cook before the outside burns. You also need to keep them fairly dry so that they get hot fast - water keeps the temperature to 212 degrees F until it evaporates. I guess there is a reason you don't see jelly-stuffed biscuits.
I put foil on the top and tried to bake it at 400 degrees a bit longer, but it really didn't cook well. After about 25 minutes, I pulled it out and tried to cut it. It was truly a hot, sloppy mess. You were able to eat most of it since much had cooked, but the part near the jam really wasn't very pleasant. The kids were troopers and ate my creation without complaint, but I could tell they would not want that meal again. So, scratch that idea.
Sometimes things just don't work out when you try something new. But sometimes they work out great. That's part of the fun with cooking. The other part is all of the money you save by not needing to pay $10 each for breakfast.
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