On About Biscuits

There has been a lot written about biscuits by experts and partisans of all kinds. I am neither. By biscuits, I mean traditional North American type biscuits, rather than the English sort. The latter are pretty much what we mean in the US when we say "cookies". This difference has caused some transatlantic confusion in the past, but seems generally understood these days. Our biscuits are more closely related to scones. (Though not so much to the various sweet "scones" ubiquitous in the US these days- filled with blueberries or chocolate chips, or what-all) Biscuits are little short (short as in shortening, e.g.. butterfat) breads/rolls, which have many regional and ethnic variants. I can't say I've ever met one I didn't like. Or that I'm a master of any particular type, either.

Many southern cooks sing the praises of White Lily flour for light biscuits. Some fans prefer flaky biscuits, or beaten biscuits, buttermilk, butter, or lard. The fast food chain, Popeye's, serves astonishingly good biscuits.(Their chicken and red beans and rice are pretty good too, actually, though probably they could be applied directly to your arteries, to save time). Most fast food biscuits are on the pathetic and doughy side, though. Still, presented with one, I tend to eat it. All of it. Exuberant advocates of specific recipes tend to come from, or adopt, one of the regional traditions of biscuit making.It's fun to check out their arguments.

I don't come from a classic biscuit tradition myself-the only biscuits we (occasionally) had in my childhood were drop biscuits made with Bisquick -and they weren't so bad either. Nor can I claim to be entirely opposed to the kind of biscuits that come in the exploding cardboard tubes- I've eaten them uncomplaining on many occasions, despite full knowledge of the weird chemical components listed on the packaging. I just plain love biscuits-for breakfast with sausages and gravy, made into strawberry shortcakes, topping cobblers and potpies, tiny ones with thinly sliced country ham at parties, and spread with butter -eaten with anything juicy, or salty or saucy.

I have a small collection of biscuit cutters, round and square, and even this thrifty old-fashioned device which you could roll across biscuit dough to cut perfectly aligned biscuits, leaving no scraps. My budding collection gives me something small, easy to carry and cheap to look for at flea markets and yard sales. And it doesn't take up too much space in my crowded apartment. I don't really have many yet..I'm especially fond of a jadite green plastic number that apparently came in a box of Bisquick in the thirties. Old kitchen tools are awfully nice to have around and use. They give me a pleasant, corny/sentimental feeling of connection with other cooks of other times and places.

I must also admit to possessing one of the sillier varieties of napery ever conceived of by the victorians, who so loved to invent single use food accessories, (we owe them the asparagus peeler, and the pickle fork, for example), the better to advertise their prosperity, and love of gimmick to their dinner guests.It is a biscuit server thingie- it folds down flat, and opens to hold biscuits in its little pockets, keeping them warm, and making them look like little animals, hiding in burrows. Linen of course. Did I mention that I have two? Oy. As you may have noticed, I am not necessarily entirely practical, or sane.

Anyhow, I'm not wedded to a particular biscuit recipe- I like to try different types. I'm this way about rice pudding, too. As a rule, I like to choose, and learn well, a single recipe for most of my favorite foods. It is comfortable to have a repetoire you can count on. For some reason,though, I don't feel like settling for one sort of biscuit. I'm a sucker for any slightly varied recipe I haven't yet tried. I do have an old reliable one though, which I make when I'm pressed for time. It's a James Beard recipe for cream biscuits-simple as can be, courtesy of Marion Cunningham, his friend and protege.

This is a truly fool proof recipe-perfect for a beginning cook to impress his or her friends. For some reason, serving any homemade bread product makes most people feel pampered, and it sometimes induces extreme and highly satisfactory expressions of gratitude. This works for me- on the giving and on the receiving ends of the equation.

Cream Biscuits
2 cups all purpose flour
1 Tbsp baking powder
2 tsps sugar
1 tsp salt
1 to 1 1/2 cups heavy cream
5 Tbsps melted butter

Preheat oven to 425F. Put dry ingredients in a bowl, and fluff them together with a fork. Stirring constantly, slowly add 1 cup of the cream. Gather it all together, adding a bit more cream if it goes saggy and dry. When it holds together nicely, put it on a floured bread board, and knead it for about 60 seconds. Pat it into a square about 1/2" thick. Cut into 12 squares, and dip each in the melted butter, dipping all sides of each biscuit. Put them on an ungreased baking sheet, about 2" apart. Bake about 15 minutes, or until lightly browned. Serve hot. (This actually takes longer, in my slow oven. Know your equipment and its flaws, eh?)

These could not be easier and they are soooo good. I have made them using half and half, when I had no heavy cream, and they are not (if you will excuse me) half bad.

Addendum: And, because I can't leave well enough alone, here is another unusual biscuit recipe-also very good-but not so good-for-you, I guess:

From Shuck Beans, Stack Cakes and Honest Fried Chicken, by Ronnie Lundy

2 cups flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 Tbsp baking powder
1/4 cup bacon grease
1/2 cup milk

Mix dry ingredients in a bowl. Work bacon grease in with your fingertips-use a light hand and save a little of the grease out. Add milk a little at a time until the dough holds together, but is not wet or sticky. Ms. Lundy squeezes these biscuits out using a technique that I have not mastered. You can, however, pat the dough out into a rectangle 1/2" thick, and cut it with a biscuit cutter or knife. Place on an ungreased baking sheet and smear a tiny dab of the grease on top of each one-just a smear.Bake at 400F for about 15 minutes, or until just browning. Serve hot.

Comments

[anapestic]

I love that biscuit cutter.

Since my parents come from the South, I was raised in a household where there were strong feelings about the way biscuits should be made, and I can recall my parents getting into more than one argument about the amount of shortening (i.e., too much, according to Mom) that Dad put in whenever he made the biscuits. I have happily abandoned shortening in favor of butter and sweet milk in favor of buttermilk, but my partner makes drop biscuits, and it is hard work to open my mouth to take a bite from one of them without letting a remark pass. Drop biscuit batter is fine as a dumpling, but you cannot split a drop biscuit easily, and you should be able to split a well-made biscuit with your hands, preferably while it is still hot from the oven so that the pat of butter you put between the halves will liquefy almost immediately, causing you to have to flip the biscuit over a few times to ensure even distribution of the butter.

[china]

i've got the most wonderful ancestral biscuit recipe which requires an ungodly ammount of baking powder (3 tbsp!) and buttermilk. it's seemingly fool proof - i've thought i've messed them up a number of times and it utterly thrills my southern relatives (texan).

[zp]

I feel exactly the same way about biscuits; in my mind they are related to scones, they are all good, even the fast food versions, except the ones in tubes, but bisquick type are good. For a few years my mother made a bisquick type that came from a local restaurant's mix. And, as per my recent photo, I eat my something out of nothing scones (now happily dubbed "scones so good somone else will get up early and make them for you") with all kinds of savory dishes.

[Julie]

Biscuits are in the air.

A few days ago I was noting once again the mention of biscuits in Laurie Colwin's More Home Cooking which I had picked up in the course of doing something else but had to take a few minutes to read. I was thinking to myself as I read about biscuits that it was surprising I'd never once tried to make them.

Then I see lobstersquad's post about biscuits and then yours. I'm inspired!

Love the biscuit cutter in the photo. Biscuit cutters seem like a great thing to collect -- something which Laurie Colwin also talked about doing.

[lindy]

china-I'm sure we would all be delighted if you would send us the family recipe.
julie-I'm sure I subconsciously got the idea of collecting them from L. C. BTW, guys, I'm going to add to the post- another slightly off-center biscuit recipe. This one from Ronni Lundy. Check above.

[Rebecca]

Biscuits are the best; when I was young it was the first thing all girls learned to bake, whether it was in home-ec class or the 4-H Club, or just at Mom's knee. I still use the recipe from my 35-year old red and white check Good Housekeeping Cookbook, called "Biscuits Supreme", substituting buttermilk and using butter for the fat. It's extra-rich and has more baking powder.

I am intrigued by the recipe on The Amateur Gourmet, by way of Lobstersquad, which has you rolling the scooped dough in flour, then brushing with melted butter.

Love your rolling biscuit cutter!

[doug didier]

hi

cant figure out how the biscuit cutter functions..

doug

[china]

here's my mom's biscuit recipe:
ingredients:
2 cups flour
1/2 cup flour (about) for handling the dough
3 tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
6 tbsp butter
1 1/2 cups buttermilk

prep:
freeze butter 30 min ahead of time
preheat oven to 400
melt 1 tbsp butter in the pan the biscuits will bake in
melt another tbsp in the microwave in the measuring cup with buttermilk in it

directions:
mix the dry ingredients and sift them into a bowl
grate the butter into the flour and stir it around until its crumby
make a pit in the flour and pour in the buttermilk
stir lightly with the tips of your fingers until just mixed
flour the bowl and pat the dough into a ball
flatten the ball and put a hole in the middle fill the hole with more four
pull the dough into 8 pieces
pat the pieces into balls with loose flour and roll each piece once in the pan, coating it with butter
drizzle the remaining butter on top

bake 15 min

i've tweaked it a bit since i'm using a toaster oven right now (until my real oven gets fixed). the recipe originally came from my great-great-grand mother who cooked nothing else, according to ledgend, because she was such a hypochondriac.

[Kimberly]

The first thing I'm going to bake in our new oven: biscuits. Because homemade preserves are good on toast, but even better on biscuits. Here's the pressing question: which recipe will I use? Hmmmm...

[lindy]

Can't believe no one is making fun of the biscuit cosy. You are kind.
Doug-you roll it, making rows of biscuits.
china-thank you! that's an interesting one. I intend to try it. Does it cure hypochondria?
rebecca- I know that book well! The embodiment of nostalgia. It has a great rice pudding recipe too.
kimberly-I am following the kitchen saga with interest. when will the stove arrive on the scene?

[Lynn D.]

I love old linens and have eagerly accumulated castoffs from grandmothers, aunts, mothers (in law) and friends as well as buying some things at garage sales and thrift shops. From my grandmother I acquired two strange pocketed things that I kept around for years wondering what they were. For storing silver napkin rings and tea balls? No they weren't flannel. A few years ago I started divesting the things I never used and they were the first to go. Mine weren't nearly so fine as yours, just plain pale blue linen. Pardon my speaking so coarsely of such a fine item, but it must be a real bitch to iron. How to you keep it from having unsightly grease stains when in use and how can such thin fabric actually keep a biscuit warm?

I received an electric bun warmer when I got married 30 some years ago. I no longer have it either. I find that 15 seconds in the microwave perks up a cold biscuit admirably

[china]

the woman lived, on the verge of death, until she was 93. I'd say these biscuits are good for you! she even used shortening. (shortnin')

[lindy]

Lynn-I think it mainly keeps them warm by keeping them together and covered-like when you put hot biscuits in a bowl or basket, wrapped in a napkin. The ironing is not much of a problem with mine-they are flat when empty. Re the grease-mine are white-I bleach them. All that being said-I don't actually use them often. When I do, well, my family and friends don't hold back with the mockery. Much that is victorian is just not so practical.
I Iove old linens, too. Someday I'd like to find some real linen sheets, for a reasonable price. (I've seen some on ebay, but they cost the earth.)
china-I always knew biscuits must be good for you.

[farmgirl]

I can't believe I read this before breakfast. Fortunately I was able to scrounge up an oatmeal currant scone in the freezer and am now fine. Love the biscuit warmer thingie. I think I've seen those in antique shops but never knew what they were. While I also love the biscuit cutter, I am so bad at thinking three-dimensionally (I actually had to drop out of an architectural rendering class in college because I could never figure out from the three 'views' that I was supposed to be drawing a bolt or some other mystical item) anyway, even with your explanation, I still can't picture the biscuit cutter in action.

P.S. Thanks for all the great comments you leave on my blog. You always tell the best little stories. They are such a treat. : )

[lobstersquad]

love, adore, revere biscuits. I´ll try yours with the cream. There´s nothing better. that gadget is pretty fascinating, too.