Gluten Free Almond Flour Pinched Biscuits

I'm a country girl, raised on homemade biscuits and gravy. My grandmother was the Queen of Biscuits and Gravy as far as I was concerned. None of those dropped or rolled and cut biscuits either, but the pinch 'em and pat 'em out in your hand biscuits. They weren't the prettiest biscuits ever made, but I'm pretty sure they were the best.

I've been missing those. They're not exactly Paleo or very healthy, so I've managed to restrain myself for months now. I'm becoming biscuit deprived....I'm sure of it.

So, I've been looking around for a biscuit recipe and I've found several I'm going to try. The first one comes from Elana's Pantry. She has so many awesome recipes, I recommend you bookmark her page.

You can find Elana's biscuit recipe here.

I made one adaptation to the recipe, I used melted pasture butter in place of the buttery spread.

I come from a long line of pinch 'em and pat 'em out in your hand and cook 'em in the iron skillet biscuit makers(we really do talk like that in these parts you know), so I decided to give it a try with this recipe. I made a few changes in the procedure. This is a sticky dough, so you have to firm it up a bit, but not too much or they will be tough. That's the first thing I learned when being taught by my grandmother; "don't work too much extra flour in and don't work the dough too much, they'll be packy. No one wants a packy biscuit. If you prefer rolling your biscuits or dropping them, that's entirely your choice, if rolling them out, you'll probably need to roll them between two sheets of parchment paper. If dropping them, you won't need the extra flour.

Pinched and Patted Biscuits

2 1/2 cups almond flour, plus enough to dust the dough
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 cup melted pasture butter(my variation from Elana's recipe)
2 eggs
1 tablespoon honey(or agave nectar)
Olive oil for iron skillet, just enough to lightly coat the bottom

1. In a medium bowl, combine almond flour, salt and baking soda
2. In a large bowl, blend together melted butter, eggs and honey
3. Stir the dry ingredients into the wet until a dough forms(will be sticky)
4. Dust cutting board with extra almond flour and turn dough out on board
5. Dust your hands, and work with the dough a bit, turning over a time or two to add enough of the dusting flour to make the dough not so sticky.
6. Form a sort of roll to be better able to pinch the biscuits off(see picture)
7. Pinch off enough for a small biscuit and pat in your hand to form.
8. Place formed biscuit in iron skillet that has a small amount of olive oil in bottom
9. Gently turn biscuit over in skillet so top and bottom are coated with olive oil, I pat them with the back of my hand to flatten them a bit. I can still see my Mama Ruby's little hands doing this!
10. Bake at 350 for 15-20 minutes or until biscuits are nicely browned.

Makes about 8 biscuits

Formed and ready to pinch!

Small amount of olive oil in medium skillet

In skillet ready to bake

Out of the oven

I have to admit, I was a bit anxious to see if they would actually work like this! They did! Very nice looking biscuits.

Oh yeah! Next move....butter and strawberry chia seed jam!

I was out of blanched almond flour, so I had to grind my own from plain almonds, this always gives a coarser and darker flour. They're a little grainy but very, very good. Not quite Mama's biscuits, but they'll certainly do in a pinch(pun intended).

I love it when a plan comes together!

Now....I need another biscuit!