Biscuit Making and Sopping

Left: Biscuit made with Adluh flour. Right: Biscuit made with Aunt Jemima flour.

I said I was going to share biscuit making after I got back from Christmas and watched my Dad make biscuits, but I couldn’t until I had the right flour. You see, you need the right kind of flour – self-rising flour from the South, like White Lily or Red Band. National brands like Pillsbury will not work. Why? Because national brands use a different type of wheat. I had to throw out my Southern flour when the weevils invaded, but I just returned from my trip with a fresh bag of Adluh self-rising flour – a brand that is made about a mile from where I grew up in an old brick mill that I fondly remember touring while in grade school. (I cannot remember how that field trip tied into our lessons, but I do remember the warm biscuits and jam they served us.)Biscuit Bake Off – Biscuits made with Southern flour make lighter, better tasting biscuits. To prove the point, I made a test batch with Aunt Jemima self-rising flour. (With that character, you'd thinks it's a Southern flour, but it's not – Quaker owns Aunt Jemima.) I made the two biscuit batches (Adluh and Aunt Jemima) the exact same way, placed them on the same baking sheet, and baked them at the same time.

Overall, the Adluh biscuits rose just slightly higher than the Aunt Jemima biscuits, but the highest Adluh biscuit and the highest Aunt Jemima biscuit were the same height. The Aunt Jemima biscuits brown a little more than the Adluh biscuits.

The Adluh biscuits won hands down in the blind taste test. We ate both biscuits warm, straight out of the oven. The Adluh biscuits were lighter and had a real biscuit flavor. The Aunt Jemima biscuits were slightly chewier, with the browned edges (these edges were by no means over cooked) adding an unwanted crunch. The real difference was in the flavor; the Aunt Jemima biscuits tasted bread-like, not biscuit-like, and had a funny after taste. These were subtle differences, but after having the two side by side, I don’t think a restaurant (or you) would choose to make biscuits with national brand flour.

Dad's Biscuit Recipe

When I look into cook books for biscuit recipes, I find recipes with all purpose flour and baking powder, recipes with buttermilk, or recipes with yeast. I don’t remember biscuits being made this way; I remember just three ingredients – self-rising flour, shortening, and milk. I finally had to ask my Dad how he made biscuits. He showed me, and then emailed me his recipe...

• I do about 1 and 1/2 cups of self-rising flour (the other flour won't do).
  
• Then I sprinkle about a 1/4 cup of flour onto a paper napkin.
  
• I mix the Crisco into the flour with a fork ("cut it in") and that amount is best remembered as "about the size of an egg." I have no idea what the actual measurement is. (If you put to much shortnin' it will be crumbly.)
• After the shortnin' is cut in I add milk. I add enough milk until it is the consistency I want and that is only about a 1/2 cup (I think). Mix that up with the fork until it looks right. If you use too little milk the biscuits will be dry. Too much you can cook out. If it's too much milk and is a little "sticky" wet than you can cure that by placing the dough on the paper with the flour and sprinkling a little more flour on the top. You've got to have some flour on your hands anyway so you can handle the dough.
• Then, after it has been mixed up, fork it out onto the paper and mash it all out by hand and fold it 4 times as your mash it into the shape your want. (Mine always ends up kind of square.) Don't be afraid to add more flour to your hands and the top of the dough as you mix.
• I cook them at 400 degrees here but some call for it to be as high as 425 or even 450.
  

Notes on Dad’s Recipe - Turned out perfectly. Thanks, Dad!

• This recipe makes about 8-10 biscuits.
  
• Shortening the size of an egg is about 3 tablespoons.
• I used about 3/4 cup of milk.
• I baked the biscuits on a greased sheet for 10 minutes at 450°

Click on the above photo of the back of the Adluh flour bag to enlarge for an almost identical biscuit recipe .

Biscuit Making Technique – In order to get biscuits that are fluffy, it’s important not to handle the dough much. Some recipes call for kneading, but there is no kneading involved. Just mix the milk into the flour and shortening mixture until incorporated – do not over mix. Turn this wet glob out onto the floured surface, and sprinkle the top generously with flour. Press down on the dough with floured hands – about two or three presses. (This is not kneading, but merely flattening.) Fold the dough in half, press. You fold four times, adding flour as you go so that the dough does not stick to you. The dough is wetter and softer than you think it is – this is not the elastic dough you are familiar with and pound to death when making bread.Flour with shortening cut in, wet dough turned out onto floured surface, the gentle press, cut biscuit dough.

The scraps left over after cutting the biscuits out that you mash together to form more biscuits will not be light and fluffy - that's what a little extra handling will do to the dough!

Place biscuits butting right up to each other on the baking sheet. This makes the biscuit rise upward further, because you have not given them the room to spread outwards.

Sopping Biscuits – My Dad also taught me how to sop biscuits. Lots of people sop up gravy on their plate with biscuits, but I don’t think I was ever served biscuits and gravy at home. Biscuits were for butter and sweet things like preserves or soppin’. What’s soppin? Soppin’ is dipping biscuits in cane syrup or sorghum syrup that has butter mashed up in it. You add room temperature butter to a shallow dish, pour syrup over the butter, and mash the butter up with a fork. You then dip your biscuit in the butter and syrup mixture, or spoon it up onto your biscuit after each bite.

Goddamn, this is good!

Cane syrup and sorghum syrup are other grocery items that I bring up with me after trips home. Cane syrup is sugarcane juice boiled down into a syrup, and sorghum syrup is the sorghum cane juice boiled down into a syrup. These syrups are thick, strong syrups that some may need to get used to, but very worth a try. It’s even hard to find pure cane syrup and sorghum syrup in the South anymore. Sometimes you have to order the good things – like Southern flour, cane syrup, and sorghum syrup.

I hope this has helped demystify biscuit making. Do search out or order some Southern flour if you're a hardcore biscuit lover - and try sopping, too.