Tina Adams of Fossil is my baking soul sister and her baked goods always win first place at the Wheeler County fair. If I could make pies, cakes and muffins half as good as hers, I would be twice as happy! Some people just seem to have a knack.
So I was delighted when she offered to teach me how to bake perfect buttermilk biscuits. Tina and her husband, Greg, lived in the South years ago. And this is so funny – the folks down there scorn “Yankee biscuits”, those made with Gold Medal flour. To make a truly Southern buttermilk biscuit, I had to have the right flour. And that flour is White Lily self-rising flour made from 100% soft winter wheat.
When I arrived for my lesson, Tina handed me a bag of White Lily. The recipe is printed on the back – just add buttermilk and vegetable shortening (Tina uses butter). The leavening is already mixed into the flour.
She put the flour in a mixing bowl, cut in butter until it was the size of peas, poured in the buttermilk, and added a splash more when the dough seemed a bit too stiff. She blended it with a special fork that had been in her family since she was a little girl.
If you don’t have buttermilk, you can add white or apple cider vinegar or lemon juice to plain milk and let it sit for ten minutes. Or, if you have some buttermilk but not quite enough, you can top it off with plain milk and let it sit at room temperature for an hour or so.
Tina rolled the dough out on a vintage Tupperware pastry mat, cut them with a biscuit cutter and brushed the tops with melted butter. She says the secret to perfect biscuits is to bake them on cast iron. Her oblong cast iron griddle has been in her family for decades and she slid it into the oven while it was preheating.
I could hardly wait to eat hot biscuits smeared with butter and Tina’s homemade strawberry jam and apple butter. I just knew they’d be crunchy on the outside and soft, tender and flaky on the inside. We sat down to a table set with two plates and knives, a platter of biscuits, butter and jam. Ah, the joy of simple pleasures.
Later, I found myself thinking it would be fun to do a Yankee versus Southerner biscuit bake-off. Tina can use White Lily flour and I’ll use Gold Medal. Maybe we’ll enter our biscuits in the county fair and let the judges decide on the winner. Now that’s something fun to look forward to!