Grandmother’s Southern Biscuits

Tuesday  in the early evening  Mystie

I’m going to start a series — and maybe I can get Elly to join me — on the breads I have made from my new bread book. Our local library has it, and I checked it out twice, renewing it each time, and the recipes I copied from it quickly became my go-to recipes, so — with Matt’s quick and enthusiastic approval — I purchased the book: Bernard Clayton’s New Complete Book of Breads.

Tonight for dinner I attempted Grandmother’s Southern Biscuits on page 499. For those wishing to be biscuit-baking aficionados, there’s a page worth of tips before the recipe actually begins. The ingredient list is identical to my basic Betty Crocker baking powder biscuits that I’ve been making for years, and the results weren’t terribly different, but they were noticeably better. Matt even asked if it was a new recipe. They had a browner crust, they were definitely cooked through but still moist and crumbly, and they were a little sweeter. However, they fell a little more, but that is something I could probably remedy by improving my technique rather than the recipe. They are a little wetter and I handled them as little as possible, but perhaps my handling was supposed to add a bit more flour and structure to them than it did. The primary factor to the difference, I believe, is that they baked at 500-degrees rather than 450. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my bread making adventures it is that oven temperature really does make a big difference. With the higher temperature, they only baked for 8-10 minutes instead of 10-15, so I liked that. Usually biscuits are my “Oh, drat, I think this dinner needs a little more substance” addition. Still, it probably won’t be a frequently made recipe simply because it does call for Crisco and although I haven’t eliminated Crisco from my pantry I do try to keep its use to a minimum. So, when I do make biscuits I think this will be the recipe I go for, but that won’t be terribly often.

One funny thing, the ingredient list called for “sweet milk” specifically. Now I know that Southerners drink “sweet tea,” but “sweet milk,” too?! I simply added another tablespoon of sugar.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 14th, 2007 at 7:15 pm and is filed under Cook. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.