Scone and biscuit "batter," not dough. What the heck is going on?
I've been making baking powder biscuits and scones for nearly 20 years now, and using the same recipes. In the past four or five months I've been running into real trouble with my doughs. My biscuit dough and scone doughs are becoming nearly batters. I'm having to nearly double the amount of flour in relation to liquids in order to have dough that I can even remotely handle, and the resulting product is not producing great oven spring or rising properly like it used it. And using a bench knife to cut it is a pain; the doughs are sticking to the knife, which is not something I struggled with before.
I can only assume that my problems with biscuits and scones are related somehow to a change in the moisture content of my water, but I didn't think that it would throw my recipes off this much. My cookies and breads don't seem to be affected much, if at all. Does anyone have any ideas about:
1. Whether or not this level of variance can be attributed to the flour (I can't think of anything else)
2. How I can assess the flour I buy in the future for moisture
3. How I can correct my recipes when working with this particular flour.
4. Other ideas?
For the record, I'm using bulk-bin Giusto's organic unbleached AP flour.
Any ideas are appreciated. This is ridiculous!