Best Biscuits

Hello biscuit buddies–  The biscuits Larry’s Arkansas grandmother used to make are legendary in his family.  I’ve tasted a few and can vouch for their perfect match of crispy edges and tender centers.  She had a drawer of flour in the kitchen and would pat a little well in the middle of the flour and add in her other ingredients, incorporating just enough flour to make them perfect.  Then she’d lift the dough out of the drawer and cut out her biscuits.  Beautiful.  I’ve made hundreds of biscuits in the last 40 years, but these are the closest I’ve come the Grandma’s biscuits.  So tender, hot and buttery.

BEST BISCUITS
2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 tablespoons  sugar
4 tsp. baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
9 tablespoons chilled unsalted butter, cut into small chunks
1 cup buttermilk*

Stir together the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt.  The use a pastry blender or food processor to cut the butter into the dry ingredients, just until the butter breaks up into pea size pieces.  The stir in the buttermilk.  Pat the dough into a round about 1 1/2″ thick.  Cut out the biscuits with a cookie cutter or like grandma with the open end of a drinking class dipped in flour.  Put them on a baking sheet sprayed with cooking spray.  Bake from on the top rack of your oven at 400 degrees for about 15 minutes until they are prettily browned.

Makes about 10 puffy delicious biscuits.  Serve them hot from the oven with lemon curd, berry jam, honey, marmalade… There’s no end to the yummy stuff you can pile on top.

*Usually for baking I’m a cheapskate (I mean frugal) and just use regular milk with a plop of vinegar instead of buying a whole quart of buttermilk,  but these biscuits I splurged and brought home real buttermilk and it was worth it!

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