Thursday, October 14, 2010

Regan's (Unauthorized, Highly Modified) Easier-than-Pie BISCUITS

Ingredients:
White Lily UNBLEACHED Self Rising Flour (1 part)
Whipping Cream (2 parts)
Buttermilk
Butter, the best you can buy (Cabot's)

Day in Advance: Pour whipping cream into a jar large enough to hold it and 2-3 T of buttermilk. Put top on jar and shake well before placing in a warm spot for 24 hours or until the whipping cream has soured and curdled ('clabbered'). Yum.

1. Get out your great-great grandmother's bread board and measure into it twice as much flour as you have 'clabber'. Don't bother sifting the flour. Just take a whisk and stir it around a bit. Preheat your oven to 400 degrees F, making sure the rack is positioned in the middle of the oven.

2. Make a 'well' in the center of the flour and pour in most of the 'clabber'. Gently, gently, gently fold the flour up into the the liquid. Slowly. Introducing the flour into the liquid and giving it time to absorb, coaxing it, not beating it into submission. Take the reserved liquid and sprinkle it onto the places where there is obviously too much flour. After a minute or two, you will be able to lightly knead the dough (turn it and fold it) about twice. The less you handle the dough, the more tender the biscuits.

3. This next step is up to you. If your great great grandmother's bread board came with a rolling pin and you still have it, you may want to gently roll the dough out on a lightly floured surface until the dough is about 1" thick and cut the biscuits with a biscuit cutter dipped into flour after each cut, being careful not to 'twist' the biscuits as you cut them. Maybe your family tradition is to pinch the dough off in large walnut-sized pieces and shape them with the rounded cups of your palms into round biscuits, patting them a bit to flatten them after you place them onto the greased baking sheet. It's your choice. For some reason, I always place handformed biscuits touching each other on the baking sheet. Cut biscuits I always have well separated.

4. Bake in that preheated oven until lightly golden brown on the top and bottom. The time will vary according to how big and how thick you made your biscuits and how true your oven temp is. Just turn on your oven light and watch them. Is that so hard?

5. Melt 2-3 T of that Cabot butter and baste the tops and sides of the hot biscuits as they come out of the oven. Serve them piping hot and pass plenty of butter and homemade preserves such as seedless blackberry or fig with lemon and vanilla.

4 comments:

Eleanor said...

LOL -- should have kept looking. Wonderful.

CabotCoop said...

Those are definitely easy- thanks for sharing the recipe! Your commentary is hilarious :) Thanks for using Cabot butter, too- our farm family owners appreciate it, and so do I!
~Jacquelyn

Carter Monroe said...

Just saw this. Christ! "Gourmet" my big ol' butt! Get Marshall's frozen biscuits (the little ones) and a 12 pack of your favorite light beverage. Cook'em about half again as long as the directions suggest, then sit'em on the counter. Drink half the 12 pack and then eat one cold biscuit every time you go to the fridge for another beer. That's my recipe.

Anita Miller Garner said...

Carter, Carter, Carter. Come see us down here on the TN River so we can make you some biscuits and you can complain about them. But yes, I have eaten those Marshall's small biscuits. I have had worse. I'll take you to the Hardee's in Loretto, TN when you get here.