Buttermilk Biscuits

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As a little girl, I followed my grandmother around the kitchen while she made the lightest, most wonderful biscuits in the world. I used her bread bowl, her flour, her buttermilk -- I did everything the same. But, my biscuits always turned out a dry, mealy mess. I would cry and say, "Nanny, what did I do wrong?" She would lean down and give me a big hug and say, "Honey, I guess you forgot to add a touch of grace."

It took me 20 years to figure out what my grandmother was doing that I missed. I thought that the dough had to be dry enough to shape by hand. She actually had a very wet dough. She sprinkled flour from the front of the bowl on it, pinched off a biscuit-size piece of wet dough, and dipped it in the flour. She floured the outside of this wet dough so that she could handle it. Wet dough in a hot oven creates steam to puff and make feather-light biscuits. A wet dough was the big secret. Combining the wet dough technique with a low-protein flour like Tenda-Bake produces incredibly light, moist biscuits.

Shirley's Touch of Grace Biscuits

Makes 12 to 14 biscuits.

Nonstick cooking spray

2 cups self-rising flour (low-protein Southern flour like Tenda-Bake, if possible)

1/4 cup sugar

3/4 teaspoon salt

4 tablespoons shortening

2/3 cup heavy cream

About 3/4 cup buttermilk, or more if needed

1 cup plain flour (low-protein, like bleached all-purpose, for shaping)

2 tablespoons butter, melted

Preheat the oven to 425 F (375 F convection) and arrange a shelf slightly below the center of the oven. Spray an 8- or 9-inch round cake pan with nonstick cooking spray.

In a large mixing bowl, stir together the self-rising flour, sugar and salt. Work the shortening in with your fingers until there are no huge lumps. Gently stir in the cream. Stir in buttermilk until the dough resembles cottage cheese. It should be a sticky mess -- not soupy, but thick cottage-cheese texture. If you are not using low-protein Southern flour, this may require more than a cup of buttermilk.

Spread the plain (not self-rising) flour out on a plate or pie pan. With a medium ice cream scoop or large spoon, place 3 or 4 biscuit-size scoops of dough well apart in the flour. Sprinkle flour over each. Flour your hands. Turn a dough ball in the flour to coat, pick it up, and gently shape it into a round, shaking off the excess flour as you work. Place this biscuit into the prepared pan. Coat each dough ball in the same way and place the shaped biscuit smushed up against its neighbor so that the biscuits rise up instead of spreading out. Continue scooping and shaping all of the dough.

Place the pan on the arranged shelf in the oven. Bake until lightly browned, about 20 to 25 minutes. Brush with melted butter. Invert onto one plate, then back onto another. With a knife or spatula, cut quickly between biscuits to make them easy to separate. Serve immediately. "Butter 'em while they're hot," or spread with Cherry-Chambord Butter (recipe below).

CHERRY-CHAMBORD BUTTER

This is also excellent with orange marmalade instead of cherry preserves and Grand Marnier instead of Chambord.

Makes about 1 1/2 cups.

8 tablespoons (1 stick) butter, softened at room temperature for about 20 minutes

1 package (8 ounces) cream cheese, slightly softened

1/3 cup confectioners' sugar

2 tablespoons Chambord or other raspberry liqueur

1/3 cup good cherry preserves

Beat the butter, cream cheese, and confectioners' sugar by hand or with a hand mixer to blend well. Stir in the Chambord and then the preserves. Chill well before serving. Keeps well refrigerated for several weeks in a closed container.

 

Diane Rossen Worthington is an authority on new American cooking. She is the author of 18 cookbooks (click here), including "Seriously Simple Holidays: Recipes and Ideas to Celebrate the Season," and also a James Beard award-winning radio show host.

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(c) 2010, Shirley O. Corriher. Distributed by Tribune Media Services Inc.