Posted on 02/13/2020 4:27:29 PM PST by RoosterRedux
For 25 years in Georgia, I watched my mom make the same batch of six light, fluffy biscuits for breakfast almost every Sunday. Then I moved to New York, never to see a light, fluffy biscuit again. I arrived in the city in 2011, just in time for southern food to get trendy outside its region, and for three years, I bit into a series of artisanal hockey pucks, all advertised on menus as authentic southern buttermilk biscuits.
With every dense, dry, flat, scone-adjacent clump of carbohydrates, I became more distressed. I didn’t even realize biscuits could be bad, given how abundant good ones were in the South. Even my mom, a reluctant-at-best cook, made them every week without batting an eyelash. The recipe she used had been on my dad’s side of the family for at least three generations.
The more bad biscuits I ordered in New York, the clearer it became that there was only one way out of this problem if I ever wanted to have a decent Sunday breakfast again: I had to make the biscuits for myself. I did not anticipate the hurdles of chemistry and the American food-distribution system that stood in my way.
I asked my mom to email me the recipe, and it was three ingredients (self-rising flour, shortening, and buttermilk), mashed together with a fork. I’m not an accomplished baker, but I cook frequently, and this was the kind of recipe that had long been used by people without a lot of money, advanced kitchen tools, or fancy ingredients. Confident that I could pull it off, I marched right out and bought the ingredients. The result: biscuits that were just as terrible as all the other ones in New York. Not to be dramatic, but my failure destabilized my identity a little bit. What kind of southerner can’t make biscuits?
In subsequent attempts, I tried everything I could think of to get it right. I worried about buttermilk quality, so I bought an expensive bottle at the farmers’ market, which did nothing. I tried different fat sources, including butter and lard, which made small differences in flavor and texture but still resulted in a shape and density better suited for a hockey rink than a plate. I made sure all of my ingredients were ice-cold when I started mixing, which is a good tip in general, but did not fix my problem. I kneaded the dough more or less, made it wetter or drier. The only thing left was the flour, but I figured it couldn’t be that—wasn’t self-rising flour the same everywhere? We had just used regular grocery-store flour back home.
Out of ideas, I did what any self-respecting Millennial would do: I Googled it, and then I called my mom, and then I placed an Amazon order.
The one ingredient I took for granted had indeed been the key all along, says Robert Dixon Phillips, a retired professor of food science at the University of Georgia.
(Excerpt) Read more at getpocket.com ...
Do you use white cornmeal or yellow cornmeal???
Just looked at your homepage...How come you ain’t been to the south???
Jones Farms used to have a factory in southern Wisconsin. I believe they made a country ham. Isn’t that the same as a Virginia ham?
“I use Martha White.”
BTTT
It works for me. I make great biscuits for strawberry shortcake.
Close, but not quite the same...
Country ham is slower cured and ends up saltier and drier...
Cottonball, ping to post 81 for recipe suggestions for making good biscuits.
Look up John Pinette about gluten, on Youtube.
You can make biscuits with nothing but heavy cream and self rising flour. Enough to make a soft dough, and don’t knead it more than absolutely necessary. Back in REALLY hot oven 450 -500 degrees F.
No special flour is necessary.
Follow the recipe, use butter, sift your flour and roll them out into a big rectangle, fold dough over onto itself like a letter you’re fixing to mail and roll out again.
Do that about 5 or six times. On the last rollout, make them about 3/4” thick. Cut straight down with sharp biscuit cutter. Do not twist the biscuit cutter! Fold remnants and roll and cut as before until dough is used up.
When you put them in the pan they should touch slightly.
That is how you get nice, tall fluffy biscuits.
Oh and I’m lazy so I use the food processor to cut the butter in.
Let me tell you something good!!!!
White cornbread (not sweet) crumbled up in a glass of real cold milk...Eat it with a spoon...Unbelievable!!!!!!!!
Bookmark
When I announced I was retiring from the office, my wife announced she was retiring from the kitchen. I really didn’t believe it until that first Monday. As dinnertime approached I asked, “Well, what should we have for dinner?” She said, “Whatever you want honey”. I asked one more time with the same response. From beginning with the grill and the microwave and a lot of toast tuna sandwiches, I have gotten fairly accomplished in twenty years.
Haha, they’d kill me down there.
A quick mention of my favorite baseball team.....The Montgomery Biscuits.
Sounds like trying to order a slice of lemon ice-box pie in a House of Pies in Santa Monica in 1976. Can you believe they didn’t have it at all! As a Southerner, I was shocked, have to say.
Had a Mississippi friend who made the best homemade biscuits. We’d put butter and honey on them,,,delicious. I did exactly as she did but never could make them as good as she did. Hers were perfect every time.
There is a recipe for scones called lemonade scones. Which sure comes across as weird until you learn that in Australia and England lemonade is lemon soda.
My dad loved cornbread in milk. And yes, white cornmeal and NO sugar! In fact, my Arkansas raised mother didn’t put any flour in her cornbread, just cornmeal, egg, milk, baking powder, and salt. Then, she took her piping hot iron skillet she had melted bacon grease in, poured the grease into the cornbread ingredients, mixed it a little more, then poured it into that hot skillet and baked in a hot oven. Yum!
Personally, I use NOTHING but PIONEER FLOUR & CORNMEAL for baking. = Made in an antique mill in SAN ANTONIO on the riverbank. ====> GREAT flour & meal.
YES, PIONEER MILL ships to homesick Texicans, everywhere.
ALL OVER THE WORLD = TONS were shipped to Texas lads in RVN.
Yours, TMN78247
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