Getting the biscuits right

You may have read in a previous post that I am going to be doing some cooking demos on May 22 at The Vineyard Church in Duluth for a combined medical clinic and food shelf event. As part of that event, I am practicing making some practical recipes using the ingredients available from the food shelf. Tonight I have been tweaking a biscuit recipe using powdered non-fat dry milk to be served with a Bechamel-based traditional sausage gravy made with the same dry milk. The gravy has been made successfully and tonight the biscuits did very well. I modified the recipe printed on the bag of dry milk to make the biscuits rise a bit higher and try to eliminate the typically bitter taste that results from too much baking powder. I added a half teaspoon of baking soda, a tablespoon of sugar and more dry milk powder for the amount of water suggested in the dry milk recipe and replaced the shortening with real butter. Here is the resulting recipe if you are interested.
2/3 cup Non-fat dry milk powder
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 T baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 T sugar
3/4 teaspoon Kosher salt
4 T butter very cold butter cut into 1/4 " cubes
1 cup very cold water

Forming and finishing:
1/2 cup flour
1 T butter, melted

Preheat the oven with the rack in the middle to 500 degrees.
pray a 9" round baking pan with cooking spray or grease it with butter.
Spray the inside of a 1/4 cup measure with cooking spray.
Dough: in a large bowl, combine the first six ingredients and and mix thoroughly.
add the butter cubes and combine with your fingers or a pastry cutter until the butter and dry ingredients resemble a course corn meal texture. Don't overwork it.
Add the water and stir to combine. It will be fairly wet and sticky dough.
to form and bake:
distribute the 1/2 cup flour on a rimmed baking sheet and then using the 1/4 cup measure, scoop a 1/4 cup of the batter onto the baking sheet and roll the dough around in the flour to just bring it into a mound and place it in the prepared baking dish. Repeat with the remaining dough until you have about 10 to 12 mounds in the dish ( 9 around the rim and 2 or 3 in the center). Brush the mounds with the melted butter making sure not to flatten them.
Place it the preheated oven for 5 minutes, then turn down the heat to 450 and bake for 15 minutes more. Remove the dish to a rack and cool for 2 minutes, then invert it onto a kitchen towel and break apart the biscuits and allow to cool another 5 minutes. Serve right away with sausage gravy and fried eggs or with jam all by themselves.
Bon Appetit!