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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