Southern Style Biscuits

This morning I made biscuits for breakfast, channeling my nanny, and they turned out pretty fabulous. Using a recipe pretty much adapted from the back of a bag of self-rising flour, I managed to make a batch of soft light biscuits. The thing about making biscuits the way my nanny made them is that you basically take the recipe and double it, adding a bit of shortening and milk to make sure the amount of moisture in the mixture is right. I apologize for the lousy picture quality; food photography is another talent I am working on cultivating, and I haven’t gotten close to mastering it yet. But I will keep practicing and eventually I’ll get better.
You start by blending together the shortening and flour until crumbly; you can use a either two knives or a pastry blender, but I prefer my pastry blender because its much easier. I can blend things one handed, while holding the bowl steady, and I simply use a fork to occasionally scrape the shortening off the blender into to the bowl.

The next step is mixing in the milk with a fork; I normally discover that I need more milk to make sure that the entire mixture is moist. Don’t over mix the milk and dry ingredients; all you have to do is mix it until the dough forms and begins pulling away from the sides of the bowl. Once that’s done, sift a little flour onto your hands and dump the dough onto a floured surface. I cover my counter with wax paper because I don’t want my biscuit cutter to scratch the counter. If you don’t flour your hands and the surface, you are going to wind up with a sticky mess.
Then you knead the dough until smooth; I recommend sifting all-purpose flour over the dough and over your hands frequently to avoid having it stick to everything it touches.  Work from the outside in, pulling the dough toward the center; don’t over or under work the dough or your biscuits will be tough and hard. Once the dough is smooth, sift flour over your roller and roll the dough to a quarter inch thickness; the thicker the dough, the higher your biscuits will rise. You can also fold the dough over before cutting it to make larger fluffier biscuits. Dip your biscuit cutter in flour and press straight down to cut.
Lift the biscuits from the trimmings and place them on a pan; if there is enough flour on the bottom of the biscuits after cutting, you shouldn’t need to spray your pan with non-stick. Re-knead and re-roll the dough to cut remaining biscuits. Before baking, I recommend dusting the excess flour from the tops. Bake at 450 degrees for about ten minutes, and if your biscuits are not brown enough you can pop them into the broiler for a few minutes.

Southern Style Biscuits

4 cups self-rising flour
1/2 cup shortening
1 1/2 cup milk

• Preheat oven to 450 degrees
• Blend shortening and flour together until crumbly
• Stir in milk with fork until dough forms and pulls away from the sides of the bowl
• Knead dough on a floured surface until mostly smooth; roll to about 1/4 inch thickness
• Cut biscuits out with floured biscuit cutter, re-kneading and re-rolling trimmings if needed.
• Bake on cookie sheet at 450 for about ten minutes; more time may be needed for thicker biscuits.

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Passing it On

In Southern families, recipes and cooking tips are often passed down from mother to daughter; there is something very powerful and important about the way that works. It’s way of passing not only family traditions, but also preserving the memory of someone you love. I’m writing this entry because I am losing the person who inspired me to get into baking and cooking in general. My mom can cook, but she doesn’t have the same ridiculous obsession I seem to have with food and cooking and baking; I think it skipped a generation, and my Nanny (maternal grandmother for those of you who don’t know) passed her love of cooking to me.

When I was younger and my Pa (my Nanny’s third husband and the man I counted as my true maternal grandfather) was alive, Christmas Brunch was done at their big house on the farm, and it was huge. My Nanny would cook so much that you would think she was feeding an army. Massive piles of homemade biscuits and bowls of homemade gravy, plates full of sausage, ham, and bacon, plenty of scrambled eggs, a huge turkey, real mashed potatoes, corn, pinto beans, rolls, macaroni and cheese, and so much more. There were probably twenty of us back then, maybe a few more, and the spread was always more than we could eat; on top of that she made desserts, pecan pie, chess pie, chocolate cake, plus a variety of candies she’d made. Thanksgivings and Easters were similar, though breakfast food was not prepared. Her habit of cooking large meals was not deterred when the number of people was smaller or when it was just a Sunday dinner; my Nanny always cooked for an army. I honestly think her enthusiasm inspired my own interest in culinary attempts, and I will always be grateful for that. There is a picture of me, when I was no more than a year old or so I think, sitting on the counter, covered in flour, while my Nanny made biscuits; I know for a fact that I was the only grandchild who was ever permitted to do such a thing, and I remember her excitement when I first expressed interest in learning to cook.

Mama is often full of advice when I need it, but often, when it comes to cooking, Nanny is the person I need. I always ask my mom things like “How did Nanny do this?” or “Do you remember if Nanny had a recipe for this?”, and her typical response was to tell me to call her; now I won’t be able to do that. My Nanny is very ill, and she is not going to get better; she was such a big part of my life, and now she is going to be gone. It’s breaking my heart, and I am barely handling it. I was so proud of myself for making her “No Fail Chocolate Pie” on the first attempt, and when my biscuits turned out perfectly for the first time, but I only got to share the pie moment with her because by the time I attempted biscuits from scratch (for some reason I never got around to it until just recently) she was already far too ill; it killed me that while I could tell her all about it, she couldn’t laugh and joke about how easy it was and suggest something new for me to try. Soon I will only have her recipes and the memory of her voice, and I’m not sure how to handle it. I love my Nanny, and I will miss her so much; I already miss her. That is why I’ve made up my mind that the bakery and sweets shop I plan to eventually have will be called “A Taste of Joy” in honor of Barbara Joy Smith, my Nanny, the woman who opened my eyes and introduced me to the joy of cooking. This blog has officially been retitled permanently as “A Taste of Joy”, and hopefully I will get the money to purchase a decent domain name as well.