Biscuits in the Morning Sun

 

I work a bit later today, so I had time, after I sent the wife off to work with her tea and her sandwich, to do some dishes and sharpen my baking craft.

I am a fan of Alton Brown. His Food Network show, Good Eats, is literally the only show on television that I give a rat's ass about. He cooks, he explains scientific and historical aspects of cooking, and he's a bit of a nerd. Therefore, I consider him a spiritual leader in this dark and confusing world.

That said, I decided to execute his Phase III Biscuit recipe, as found in his I'm Just Here for More Food. I have been endeavoring to deepen and broaden my kitchen-lore, particularly by mastering basic techniques and making things from scratch that most of the USA now buys at the store. Biscuits exemplify this. More people make biscuits from scratch here in the South than in other regions, I'll venture to state, but it's an under-practiced art form nonetheless.

Here in North Cackalacky, one sees a panoply of self-rising flours at the grocery store (on the other hand, in San Diego, self-rising flour is not easy to find at all). Every brand I've seen has a biscuit recipe on the bag. Unfortunately, I've gotten nothing but forgettable biscuits out of that resource. So I hauled out AB's book and carried out his technique. It's a wet, sloppy batter (I can't truthfully call it dough), and a biscuit cutter is useless; I just plopped scoopfuls of the stuff onto the baking sheet. Seventeen minutes later, I pulled from the oven the best biscuits I've ever had. Fluffy, moist, flavorful (the subtle forces of salt, fat and tangy buttermilk were in balance like a tripod of golden-brown goodness). I'm very pleased indeed. Unfortunately, their glory will not keep. As Robert Frost wrote, "Nothing gold can stay."