Here it is! The grand finale in my quest for the perfect buttermilk biscuit recipe. I have finally, through many trials and tests – three of which I wrote about here, here, and here, found the recipe that I will be passing down to my children and their children. That’s how much I love them (the biscuits and my children).
The biscuits are back. This time they are made with White Lily flour and half butter, half shortening. I’ve actually made these a few times, but was just too lazy/busy/forgetful to take a picture. We’ve been having country ham a lot with the biscuits, my personal favorite biscuit accompaniment. I’m thinking I must do some research on buying whole country hams, so we can have it more often, but I digress.
Okay, are y’all ready for some more biscuits?
This is the second batch I made in my ongoing quest for the perfect buttermilk biscuit. You can find Batch Number One, made with unbleached all-purpose flour and shortening here. Batch Number Two was made with bleached, enriched flour and shortening, and actually turned into sub-batch a & b (how disturbingly obsessive is this?).
I don’t know what food embodies the South more than the Buttermilk Biscuit. And just like most other foods of the South, the biscuit recipe is one that is handed down through generations and every family has their own way of making them. A marriage in the South often leads to a little (or a lot) of argument discussion over what makes a good biscuit.
My mom’s mother could throw together a batch of biscuits in a matter of minutes, cutting hers out with a can and baking the scraps into little pieces for us to snack on. My dad’s mother would use what I’ve seen referred to as the pinch method – she would pinch off pieces of dough, roll them up and flatten them in the pan with her knuckles. My mother, a terrific cook and baker, was surprisingly not much of a biscuit maker, preferring the yeast roll or sometimes (gasp) biscuits that came from a can. Continue reading
Shortbread 