This morning I had a Southern-style Chicken Biscuit at McDonald's. It was tasty, though not exactly Southern-style the way I expected (not enough crust, and pretty dry). I usually get a Bacon, Egg, and Cheese biscuit and I regretted not doing that this morning. But even McDonald's bacon leaves something to want.
My father's aunt, my great-aunt, Blanche made fantastic biscuits AND even her own bacon and dark-rich cane syrup she boiled from fresh-squeezed sugarcane syrup she would have pressed herself. She had a cane press driven by a stubborn mule, she had her own pigs, and made her own bacon and, of course lard.
Lard is the key ingredient to good biscuits, and -- if you're not a vegetarian -- don't waste your time trying to make good biscuits without it.
To make the perfect biscuits like my Aunt Blanche did:
Get a long large oval wooden bowl and fill it with a 5 pound bag of White Lily self-rising flour. If you have a bug-free, dry, place to store this bowl, you can leave the flour in there (covered) until you need to refill it.
Make a well all the way to the bottom of the flour bowl in the center of the flour. Now cup your hands together at the thumbs -- like your going to fill your hands with water, but at the thumbs instead of the pinkies -- and pull a whole handful of flour from the sides into the well. Add a fist-sized ball of lard (preferably) shortening or butter to the flour in the well and work the fat and flour together until you have a mass of pea-sized crumbs. If you have warm hands, you might need to use a pastry cutter -- you want to melt the flour and the fat together, not melt it. Now start with 3/4 cup of fat-free buttermilk and moisten the flour you've mixed with fat. Depending on the weather and just how much flour you've used, you may need up to another 3/4 cup of buttermilk. Form a soft dough that sticks together and feels light for its size. Rmeove the dough from the bowl to a lightly floured flat surface. Flatten the dough in to a 10" square, 1/2-inch thick. Fold it in half away from you and give it a quarter-turn. Flatten again to a 10" square and repeat folding. Repeat this five more times. The last time you flatten the dough, use a knife to cut into 10 2" squares and place them on a lightly greased cookie sheet. Bake at 375 for 10-12 minutes. Serve with lots of butter and honey or REAL Southern-style, with (for persoon) a tablespoon of whole fat sour cream stirred into 1/4 cup dark cane-syrup.
Enjoy!
