Biscuit Magician

Though I’ve been making them for more than 30 years, I always love to stir together a batch of homemade biscuits.  My biscuit-making career started with the help of my now kitchen-stained Better Homes and Garden cookbook.  Using that recipe, I taught myself to make biscuits.  Over the years, I’ve read countless recipes and cooking magazine articles about the making of biscuits and then I’ve honed my technique accordingly.  I can make all sort of biscuits: sourdough, cheese, cornmeal, angel……but my favorite is the delicious old-fashioned basic: a buttermilk biscuit.

Buttermilk was not a regular part of my mother’s kitchen, but is was a part of my grandmother’s and it was certainly present in the Southern kitchens where I honed my biscuit-making skills.  I don’t always have fresh buttermilk on hand but when I do buy it at the market, usually to make fried chicken, blue cheese salad dressing, or chocolate cake, I always make sure to stir up some fresh buttermilk biscuits.

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I measure the ingredients into a big bowl and as I stir together the dough, memories of previous biscuits flow through my mind.  Biscuits cut into a heart shape for an impromptu Valentine’s Day celebration; biscuits served with bacon, cream gravy, and scrambled eggs on a cold Winter morning; biscuits made in a hot Summer kitchen to slather with a batch of freshly-made jam; the batch I made at JT’s request in the fleeting days before we loaded up the car and drove him to college…..my memory fills with an steady parade of warm biscuits.  

I cut them out and line them up on the baking sheet, taking care that they lightly touch one another and then carefully dimpling each one with a slight press of my thumb before I slide the pan into a hot oven.

12 minutes later, there is a basket full of steamy hot biscuits, ready for hungry eaters and stirred together with memories and loves as the unspoken but magical ingredient.