Keeping it fresh: Pillsbury Grands! Flaky Layers Bisquits

A few nights ago Mr. Borscht and I wanted to make these delicious Pillsbury Grands bisquits as a side to go with our dinner, I took the cold tube out ready to have fun with the peeling and popping!  If you've ever made bisquits or croissants from these Pillsbury tubes you know what I speak of.  I looked at the directions written on the tube, I usually forget to read the directions before I peel and pop the tube open which results in a painful 5 minutes of trying to read from a piece of peeled and curling paper.

"I wish there was a way to only make 2 or 4 of these bisquits" I said to Mr. Borscht "we always have left overs and they don't keep well at all",  Mr. Borscht put his hands against his chin, legs crossed and eyes rolling up "Hmmm..." he sounded.

"I wonder if I could just refrigerate the dough?" I said to him

"Let's look it up on line!" He briskly led the way to the computer.

Googling how to keep Pillsbury dough fresh for another day wasn't that hard to find, it seemed we were not the only couple with this dilemma, however no one really seemed to know.  There were many suggestion including one very funny one 'tell them to behave' someone said, another said that the Pillsbury bisquits came in tubes of 4 as well- we'll look for them next time but I don't remember ever having seen one.

The two suggestions that seemed would work were: 1.  Take the unused dough and store it in a plastic bag or container with a few drop of water to keep it moist, and 2.  Take the baked but uneaten bisquits, wrap it in foil and store it in a plastic container in the refrigerator, when ready to be eaten reheat in the foil at 350 degrees for 10 minutes.

"They both seem like good ideas" I said to Mr. Borscht with a perplexed face, the wheels in my head were turning rapidly as I tried to figure out which was the best option, cook, store and reheat OR store fresh?  The science was bubbling and spluttering in the brain as I tried to logically figure out if storing fresh dough with a few drops of water would keep it moist without compromising the dough in any way, or was it better to risk the dough being slightly drier by simply reheating the left overs the next day?

"Do both and experiment" Mr. Borscht merely said without even a raise in the brow.

It was an absolutely great idea!  And so I did.

Here are the results friends out there who equally love as much as I the Pillsbury bisquits, however falter from the sheer force of the quantity that must be consumed or else.

The tubes come with 8 bisquits, I made 6 as instructed, 2 of these 6 bisquits are to be stored and reheated for another day.

After cooling 2 bisquits, I wrapped in foil and then stored them in a plastic container where it would sit in the refrigerator for 2 days.

I had two fresh uncooked dough from the tube, I put these in a plastic bag with a few drops of water, I manually sucked the air out of the bag by zipping the bag leaving about 1-inch of space where I sucked out as much air as I could using my mouth and then zipping it all the way across.  This also went into the refrigerator where it would sit for 2 days.

Here they both sit quietly, contemplating life and all it's misgivings.

Two days later Mr. Borscht and I decide it is time to end this experiment and hopefully find an answer to our pitiful first world problems.

To simply reheat the left over bisquits I loosely covered the bisquits in foil where it would reheat in the preheated 350 degree oven for 10 minutes.

For the uncooked dough that was stored with a few drops of water, I merely laid out on the baking sheet and baked for 14 minutes in the preheated 350 degree oven.

The reheated bisquits when eaten warm were quite good, they were slightly chewier and ever so slightly dense in the middle opposed to their original flaky and light texture.  However, the reheated bisquits only seemed to be good when eaten warn, once they cooled down, as these bisquits do quite quickly, the chewy and ever-so-slightly dense texture turned very dense, stale and loafy.

The bisquits that were stored with a few drops of water baked well and turned golden as it usually does in the oven in it's normal state, they looked a little odd at first as they didn't have the obvious layers as they normally do and looked more like a roll than a bisquit.  Careful not to burn myself on the baking pan I took my spatula and tried to take bisquits off the foil-lined baking pan, this was hard to do as they were pretty well stuck on there, I realized maybe I should have greased the foil.  After a couple of minutes of fighting with both the foil and the bisquit I was soon able to transfer them to a plate for the real test... taste.

They were wonderful for being dough from a tube that had been stored in the refrigerator for 2 days.  They didn't have as many layers as they normally do but they tasted almost just the same, the very bottom of the bisquit was thick crispy which Mr. Borscht seemed to really like.  Other than the fact that these bisquits seemed more like bread rolls on the outside, they were quite good.

So, if you've got the same problem we have where you have too many Pillsbury bisquits to eat, storing the dough with a few drops of water in a plastic ziploc bag is the way to go.  And there you have it.