Our Daily Bread

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Our Daily Bread

My Grandpa Joe was a top-of-the-totem-pole trencherman.

While there were many foodstuffs he considered special—a slice from a watermelon so ripe it split asunder at the touch of a homemade butcher knife that had resided in a washtub filled with ice water for several hours, fresh tenderloin from a hog he had raised and butchered, a big bowl of soup beans adorned with chowchow, cornbread cooked in a cast-iron skillet to browned perfection, baked chicken that had been ranging in the yard less than 12 hours before becoming the centerpiece for Sunday dinner, and enough other dishes to set my salivary glands into involuntary overdrive merely thinking about them—possibly nothing quite matched his love for Grandma Minnie’s cathead biscuits.

Most any old-timer in the mountains will tell you that the staple bread in yesteryear was cornbread along with the many and varied offerings provided by corn meal—hoe cakes, fritters, hushpuppies, and the like. Yet in their next breath they are likely to add something to the effect “but it was biscuits that were truly special.” In my extended family these scrumptious renditions from, respectively, cornmeal and wheat flour, were pretty much co-equals. Biscuits were primarily a breakfast foodstuff while a pone of cornbread held pride of place on the dinner table and as leftovers for supper. While we ate what was commonly known as “light bread” or “loaf bread” from the local grocery store, it was generally acknowledged this sliced wonder sacrificed quality for convenience when it came to taste.

Grandpa disdained the store-bought stuff to such a degree that I don’t ever recall him eating loaf bread in any form—toast, in sandwiches, or in some other fashion. He reckoned the types of bread he had eaten all his life (and for much of that had raised the grain from which it was made) were “suitably fittin’ for a body who knows what tastes good.” His daily samplings of the staff of life, almost without exception, involved biscuits for breakfast, cornbread for dinner, and leftovers from one of the two for supper.

Like countless other high country folks from his generation and earlier ones, he raised the grains and saw to their milling while women worked their kitchen magic to put bread on the table. It was the standard male-female division of labor, for in my youthful experience—other than perhaps preparing breakfast or cooking over a backcountry campfire—males seldom handled daily culinary duties. Indeed, the sole exception that comes to mind was a lifelong bachelor whose kitchen wizardry was regularly a topic of local conversation.

Biscuit making, in particular, was considered an art, and few compliments were more welcome than ones lauding skills in baking them. Statements such as “her biscuits are so light they almost float on air,” “that woman’s biscuits rise like the morning sun,” or “now that’s a sho’ ‘nuff cathead biscuit” might bring a little smile and dismissive comment along the lines of “oh, they ain’t nothing special” or “it’s just what I bake every day,” but rest assured that underlying such reactions was an inner sense of gratification and fulfillment.

Grandma Minnie's Biscuits and Biscuit Bread

My mother was a magician in the kitchen when it came to pretty much any foodstuff, but as she readily acknowledged, she had two weak points—biscuits and gravy. So much was this the case that the only biscuits she made for the immediate family with any regularity were angel biscuits (see below). When the wider family gathered for a meal, she left both biscuits and gravy to Grandma Minnie.

In that context I’ll have to confess that I have no precise idea of how Grandma Minnie worked her culinary wonder with biscuits, and I don’t think anyone else did. She never measured anything. A lifetime of baking biscuits almost every day meant such steps were unnecessary. Often, if she was in a hurry, she wouldn’t even make individual biscuits. She’d just knead the dough and once it was ready place it in a loaf pan for baking as what everyone in the family called biscuit bread. The taste was the same, and when it came to biscuits and gravy, breaking a chunk off, crumbling it a bit, and adorning the result with some sausage or redeye gravy was just the ticket. What I can attest to with luscious recollection is that Grandma’s biscuits invariably came from the oven as fragrant examples of baking perfection—light, fluffy, and big enough to hold a whopping sausage patty or a fried egg from Grandpa Joe’s chickens without white sticking out over the edges.

While the specifics of Grandma’s biscuit recipe are gone forever, at least I was sufficiently possessed of my senses to observe the essence of what was involved. The key ingredients were baking soda, buttermilk or cream (usually the former), and store-bought self-rising flour (days of carrying wheat to a local miller were over). Add to that loving, knowing hands and you had the makings of a plate stacked with thick, fluffy cathead biscuits.

• 2 cups self-rising flour
• 1½ cups buttermilk (the more butterfat the better, and you can substitute cream, half-and-half, or blend one of them with the buttermilk)
• Generous pinch of baking soda

Mix well by hand before kneading. Roll with a rolling pin or shape by hand until your dough is of suitable thickness. Cut out biscuits from the resulting dough and place on an ungreased baking sheet. Bake at 425 degrees for 10 minutes or until nicely golden brown on top.

About all that then remains is to slather with butter and your favorite jam, jelly, or syrup as biscuit adornment. Or perhaps you’d prefer to use a fork to mix honey or molasses together and  apply the result to a biscuit. If there’s too much of the sweet mixture the answer is simple. Just have another biscuit. After all, as Grandpa would say in such situations: “The only thing better than one of your Grandma’s biscuits is two of them.” Alternately, cut the cathead open and apply plenty of gravy. Let out your belt two notches and indulge in pure pleasure!

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Our Daily Bread

Cream Biscuits

This recipe was “gifted” to me by my cherished friend and master of all things culinary, Tipper Pressley. I first saw her prepare cream biscuits in a demonstration for outdoor writers and their spouses. The recipe’s simplicity and tasty end result left everyone present with precisely the same impression—an immediate appreciation of what they were consuming (with a hearty meat and vegetable stew she also prepared) and a pleased “Why, I can do this” mindset.

• 2 cups self-rising flour such as White Lily
• 1 cup of heavy cream

Start with a ratio of 2 to 1, but if the dough seems too dry, just add a bit more cream. Mix flour and cream together in a bowl, using a spoon or spatula (coat the implement and your hands with flour to avoid sticking) and turn out onto a lightly floured surface. Kneed a few times until the mixture comes together. If the dough ball tends to stick to your hands, coat them again with flour. Flatten the dough out by hand or with a rolling pin to about an inch thickness and cut with a biscuit cutter or drinking glass. Place biscuits on baking pan and bake at 450 degrees for about 10 to 12 minutes or until golden brown.

Cheese Biscuits

Make cream biscuit recipe; add a hefty handful of grated cheddar cheese and sprinkle garlic powder to taste. Mix well. Drop batter by spoonfuls or shape individual biscuits by hand and drop onto ungreased baking sheet. Bake at 450 degrees for 10 to 12 minutes or till golden brown.

TIP: Brush melted butter on top after removing from oven for even more decadence.

Angel Biscuits

Momma readily yielded pride of place to Grandma Minnie as queen of biscuits. However, Momma did have a mighty toothsome first cousin, a cross between biscuits and yeast rolls, she called angel biscuits. She didn’t make them often, thanks in all likelihood to the fact that they required far more prep time than ordinary biscuits, but when she did the end result lived of to the name. Her angel biscuits were heavenly.

• Begin by making a yeast mixture using a quarter cup of warm water, a teaspoon of sugar, and 2¼ teaspoons of instant yeast.
• 2½ cups White Lily all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• ½ teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• ¼ cup sugar
• ¼ cup unsalted butter, chopped in small pieces
• ¼ cup shortening (lard)
• 1 cup buttermilk
• 1 tablespoon heavy cream

Mix dry ingredients together in a large bowl using a whisk. Then use a pastry cutter to cut in butter and lard until the mixture resembles small crumbs. Make a hollow in the center of the resulting mix and pour in both the buttermilk, cream, and yeast mix. Carefully stir the liquid ingredients, trying initially not to introduce the flour mixture. Once the liquids are blended, begin working the dry mixture, by hand (flour your hands) until you have a dough ball. Place the dough ball on a floured cutting board and knead it until the crumbs are mixed in thoroughly and you have a nice, soft round of dough. Spread the dough by hand and fold it back and forth on itself several times and then pat it out into a one-inch thick rectangle. Use a biscuit cutter to cut out your biscuits.

Place cut biscuits in a pan (you can use a baking sheet, but biscuits seem to rise better in a pan) and leave a bit of space between them. Allow to sit in a warm place, covered with plastic wrap, for an hour or so. This lets the yeast work its magic. After the unbaked biscuits have been allowed to rise, remove wrap and place in a pre-heated 425 degree oven. Bake until suitably brown (about 10 to 12 minutes but check early since ovens vary and the last thing you want is for them to burn). If you want glistening tops and an extra bit of browning, brush the biscuits with melted butter or a bit of heavy cream a minute or so before removing them from the oven.

Sausage Biscuit Balls

Sausage balls seem to show up mainly at Christmas or maybe as hors d’oeuvres for cocktail parties, but they are so simple they can readily be prepared quickly for any occasion. They make the basis of a hearty, working man’s breakfast or a dandy brunch when partnered with scrambled, fried, or poached eggs.

Begin by preparing biscuit dough in the fashion suggested in either the cream biscuit or Grandma Minnie recipe offered above. Mix into the dough a pound of pork sausage that is at room temperature or, as I often do, a similar amount of venison sausage that has been made with pork fat added during the grinding process. Then add, again working by hand or with a spatula, a cup of shredded sharp Cheddar cheese (Colby’s Serious Sharp is a good choice). Shape the resulting dough-meat-cheese blend into balls about the size of an English walnut by rolling a bit between your hands. Bake in a pre-heated 350 degree oven until brown and the sausage is cooked completely (20 to 25 minutes).

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Our Daily Bread

Biscuit Terminology and Tips

TERMS

• Biscuit bread Prepared biscuit dough that is not shaped into individual biscuits but baked as a “cake” or single piece. This was sometimes done when the cook was in a hurry or when the result was to be consumed with gravy. Biscuit bread is ideal for sopping pot likker or covering in gravy.
• Flumlolly Inevitably when cutting out biscuits from kneaded dough, there will be a small bit left over. Grandma often shaped this flumlolly into some fanciful design such as a tiny animal or human. Her grandchildren loved it and I personally found the fact that flumlollies were always especially crispy, thanks to cooking quicker than their full-sized companions, quite appealing.
• Baby biscuit Another term for a flumlolly.

TIPS

• Avoid twisting or turning the cutter when making biscuits. That compacts the dough a bit and lessens rising.
• When kneading dough, use barely enough flour to avoid sticking. More moisture means better rising.
• Place biscuits so they touch one another when readying them for the oven. This encourages vertical rising rather than spreading.
• When biscuits are almost done, turn the oven’s heat up to broil for 45 seconds to a minute for a browner top.