Robyn & Nance try the same recipe – Daddy’s Rise and Shine Biscuits

Recipe from the cookbook Southern Plate, by Christy Jordan, who has a wonderful web site of the same name, here.

Every Monday, we’ll post a recipe that we both made. This week’s recipe was from the cookbook Southern Plate (which we both own and which is awesome).

Your biscuit ingredients: Self-rising flour (or in my case, all-purpose flour, salt, and baking powder to make my own self-rising flour), a stick of softened butter, buttermilk. Also, you’ll use some flour for dusting, and additional butter, melted, for brushing the baked biscuits. (Please note: brushing the BAKED biscuits, not the about-to-be-baked biscuits.)

Put your self-rising flour in a bowl. If you don’t have self-rising flour, then put 2 1/4 cups of all-purpose flour in a bowl and add 1 Tablespoon and a SCANT 1/2 teaspoon of baking powder, and a heaping teaspoon of salt. Stir it together. (SCANT 1/2 teaspoon would be, basically, a teeny bit less than 1/2 teaspoon. But if you used the whole 1/2 teaspoon? I expect everything would be just fine. Don’t stress.)

Christy’s recipe calls for you to cut the butter into the flour with a long-tined fork. I don’t have a long-tined fork, so I used a pastry, um, thing. Cutter? Blender? Thingy? You’ve seen them, you know what they are, if you’ve got one use it. If you don’t, use a long-tined fork. If you don’t have that, use a couple of knives. Just shut up and do it.

Look. I’m cutting in the butter. It’s not hard, people. Cut it in ’til it looks all crumbly. Like crumbs. Then stick it in the fridge and set the timer for 10 minutes. Wander off, pet a cat, clean up the kitchen, whatever.

After 10 minutes, take the bowl out of the fridge, and add 1 1/4 cups of buttermilk. I had buttermilk on hand (which I rarely do), so I used that. If buttermilk’s the sort of thing you don’t keep around, you can add 1 T of lemon juice or white vinegar (I prefer lemon juice) to a one-cup measuring cup, fill it up the rest of the way with milk (Christy prefers whole milk; I use skim because that’s the kind of milk we use and it’s just fine) and let it sit for 5 minutes before using.

Once the buttermilk is added, stir it just until it’s moistened and holding together. You don’t want to stir it too much or you’ll get tough biscuits and no one wants that.

Turn the dough out onto a floured surface (you can use your counter; I don’t put any kind of food directly on my counter because I have cats who walk on my counters – shut it with the horrified shuddering, or I will come leave a kitten on your doorstep – so I use a pastry mat.) and knead it three or four times, sprinkling flour as you do so to make the dough less sticky. Pat the dough out into a rectangle 3/4ish inches thick. Fold each side over into the center. Repeat two more times – pat the dough out, fold it over, etc.

 

Pat the dough out a final time until it is 1/2 inch thick. Cut with a biscuit cutter dipped in flour (I have a biscuit cutter, which is what I use, but  you can use a cup or glass that’s 3″ across (you can go bigger or smaller depending on your preference). Place the biscuits on the cookie sheet – which is either greased or lined with parchment paper – so that the sides are touching.

Bake for 12 – 15 minutes at 450F, until lightly browned. Remove from the oven and brush the tops with melted butter.

PLEASE NOTE: I am an idiot, and thus I wasn’t completely paying attention to what I was doing, and so I brushed the biscuits with the melted butter before I baked them. They turned out perfectly fine, but I bet they would have been better if I’d done as I was supposed to.

 

Serving suggestions: For breakfast with some tasty homemade jam, or for lunch/ dinner with some turkey soup! (Also, if you have sausage or bacon on hand, you could make your own egg and sausage or egg and bacon biscuit that would make Ronald McDonald cry sad jealous clown tears.) Fred would probably recommend making sausage gravy and eating your biscuits with gravy, but I’m not a fan of gravy so didn’t make any.

So in conclusion, I liked the recipe – it was easy to follow, even though I’m an idiot and can’t always follow the simplest of instructions. They turned out really good. Will I make them again? Probably not, though it’s not the recipe’s fault. I didn’t grow up in the South, y’see, so biscuits aren’t a staple of my diet and I don’t expect at this late stage of the game for that to change. Next time I need to make biscuits, this is the recipe I’ll fall back on – but I have no idea when that’ll be.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Nance’s Spin

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Be jealous of my fancy bookmark up there.

So we picked this recipe and I was all kinds of happy about it. The husband (aka: Rick) is a southern boy so he’s all about the biscuits. We’ve been trying to make biscuits for years and they have always been huge fails. I’m a Yankee girl and I love biscuits. Maybe Robyn doesn’t like them because she was a WAY UP THERE YANKEE. They’re snobs and I’m pretty sure that nobody wants a biscuit getting in the way of their lobster eating. Yuck. Gimme a biscuit with some butter (none of that margarine shit for me) and I’m good to go!

Robyn got me this cookbook for my birthday. I was all, “OHHELLNO, Is she sending me this because she doesn’t like my cooking?” That right there can kill a friendship. Or not. Because I really didn’t think that. But now I have to wonder and dammit, Robyn…I’m gonna send down a Pennsylvania Dutch cookbook so that you will know how I like my Ribble soup when I come visit! humph.

Anyway…I was excited to make this, but I was also a little nervous because I’ve made so many bad biscuits that Rick is pretty much wanting to just buy those biscuits in a can (blech) and call it a day. I guess he can’t take the disappointment any more. I even sent him out for buttermilk so I could make this. Did Robyn say she had that IN HER HOUSE? Who keeps Buttermilk around and for what? She’s such a freak. I bet she’s baking special treats up for those damn chickens that stand around gossiping about people in that special clucking language they have. So rude.

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Check me out, I have a biscuit cutter too (Robyn ain’t all that).

I see Snobby Magee took a photo of all the ingredients (see: Goody-Two-Shoes) so I’m just posting a picture of my mess.  I am always afraid to touch the biscuit concoction too much because I heard that makes them tough.  This time I followed Christy’s recipe to the letter.  Another thing I hate about making biscuits (besides the possible failure and how it makes me feel like I would have died out on the plains back in the day) is the mess.  Goddamn, making biscuits is hard on someone with OCD.  The flour everywhere and the sticking your HANDS in foodstuff.  Ugh.  It’s hell.  But I persevered.

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It was SO WORTH IT.  Light and fluffy.  Fabulous.  Would I make the recipe again?  DEFINITELY.  But I can honestly say that this is not going in my regular rotation.  These bad boys are just going to have to be a once in a blue moon treat.

Daddy's Rise and Shine Biscuits
 
Prep time
Total time
 
Original Source/Author:
: breakfast, side dish
Serves: 12 - 12
Ingredients
  • 2¼ c. self-rising flour (see note for substitute)
  • ½ c. (1 stick) butter or margarine, softened
  • 1¼ c. buttermilk (see note for substitute)
  • All-purpose flour for dusting
  • Melted butter for brushing the baked biscuits
Instructions
  1. Preheat the oven to 450 and grease a baking sheet or line it with parchment paper.
  2. Place the flour in a large bowl. Cut the butter in with a long-tined fork or pastry blender until crumbly. Place in the refrigerator for 10 minutes.
  3. Slowly pour in the buttermilk and stir just until moistened.
  4. Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and knead three or four times with your hands, adding flour as needed to keep the dough from sticking.
  5. Pat the dough out into a ¾-inch thick rectangle. Fold each side over into the center as if folding a letter. Repeat two more times.
  6. Pat the dough out a final time until it is ½ inch thick. Using a biscuit cutter or a three-inch drinking glass dipped in flour, cut out your biscuits.
  7. Place biscuits on the cookie sheet with sides touching.
  8. Bake 12 - 15 minutes, until lightly browned. Remove from the oven and brush the tops with melted butter.
Notes
If you don't have self-rising flour, use 2¼ c. all-purpose flour, 1 T + a SCANT ½ t baking powder, and 1 heaping t salt. Buttermilk replacement: 1 T lemon juice or white vinegar, put in a 1-cup measuring cup, add milk to fill to the top of the measuring cup


Comments

Robyn & Nance try the same recipe – Daddy’s Rise and Shine Biscuits — 13 Comments

  1. Congrats on your new site! I cannot make biscuits, which horrifies my Southern mom and boyfriend. Of course, they can’t cook anything else and I do 99.9% of the cooking, so biscuits here are store-bought. Anyway, I will be trying this recipe ASAP and when it works, I’ll sing your praises.

    • Just use a light hand and only knead it as the recipe says and it’ll work out. Hell, this recipe is the FIRST one that worked for me!
      -nance

  2. Love the new site. Even though I live in the South, I hate biscuits because they are too much work to just get some melted butter into my body (cause I know that is one of the many nutrients I am missing – ha). I don’t even like the ones in a can because they pop (like balloons). But I will pass the recipe on to my brother who fancies himself quite the southern cook (honestly, he is pretty good), .

    • Oh, you need to become a biscuit fan – even if it’s just once a year! I wonder if they have a national biscuit day? If they don’t – I’ll get Robyn right on it!

  3. I have been afraid to make biscuits because I once tried to make scones, didn’t get the butter cut in correctly, and ended up with butter oozing out onto the cookie sheet. Yuck. I love butter, just not streaming out of my scones! I think I am going to give the “cutting in” butter another try though, because these biscuits look amazing. I am loving this site, so happy you guys decided to do this.

    • Thanks for the site love! I’m sitting here trying to figure out how you managed to have butter oozing out of your scones (hee). Just make sure you cut the butter in until the whole mess looks “crumbly” (small crumbs? like sand? – I’m such a “writer”) and you should be okay.

      Fingers crossed for not oozing butter (except on top after they’re made – yum)!
      -nance

    • I figured I would be writing an entry about another HUGE FAIL and I was amazed that I didn’t. But I seriously think it was because of DCEP – it forced me to follow the recipe exactly because I knew I was going to be reviewing it. I just wanted to “keep it real” – bwahaha.

      You CAN do this! I’m serious. Just follow her recipe exactly and keep a light hand! AND OHMYGAWD, they are SO freaking GOOD!
      -nance

      Edited to add: my name, but anybody who knows the two of us knows it was me. LOL

  4. Great job and wonderful Recipe. But what the HELL does “scant” mean? :-/ My head still hurts from all the thinking. Is it a pinch….less or more? :-/

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