Biscuits for Your Outside Man

Algia Mae Hinton shares the secret of every Southern lady’s success: “Cook cornbread for your husband, biscuits for your outside man!”

Back in the day, dinner was served at noon, and no dinner was considered complete without fresh, hot bread. Every farmer’s wife had a pantry full of cornmeal that was the staff of life, but white flour was for special occasions.

Biscuit making was an essential skill, and every lady had her own style. Bluesman Guitar Gabriel was the quintessential “outside man.” Many a young lady blushed when asked upon meeting him, “Tell me darlin’, do you roll your biscuits, or beat ’em?”

Guitar Gabe understood that biscuit making is all about the handling, which you should do as little as possible. Think of biscuit dough more like a pastry than a bread. Have your buttermilk and butter cold and your oven hot!

What to serve them with? Well, down here in North Carolina, eat them with anything fried and anything with gravy – which really means everything. What was Guitar Gabe’s favorite biscuit fixin’? He wasn’t a fussy man, but he often noted wistfully as a well-shaped woman walked by that “It must be jelly, ’cause jam don’t shake like that.”

Serving Size: 6-7 folks

Ingredients

• 4 cups White Lily Self-Rising Flour*
• 1/2 cup unsalted butter
• 1 1/2 cups buttermilk (best quality you can find)

Special tools: 2 1/2 to 3 inch biscuit cutter (or a sharp knife to cut into squares if necessary)

Set oven rack in lower half or lower third of oven. Preheat to 500 degrees for up to an hour before you plan on baking the biscuits. You want it really hot.

Scoop the flour into your sifter and sift into a large bowl. Cut butter into flour with a pastry blender or two knives until it is the size of peas. Using a fork and light, lifting motions, fluff the flour mixture as you drizzle in the buttermilk. Barley incorporate it into a shaggy dough with a few wet and dry spots still until the dough is slightly wetter than cookie dough, using a little more or less buttermilk as needed.

Sprinkle a handful of flour onto a board or counter top. Dump the dough on top and sprinkle with another generous handful of flour. With flour coated hands, bring dough together into a mass and turn over 2-3 times, just until it resembles a blob. Do not knead! Sprinkle lightly with flour and using a rolling pin, lightly level the top so that the blob is an even-ish 1 1/4″ – 1 1/2″ thick.

Keeping a small bowl of flour next to you, dip biscuit cutter into the flour and then cut biscuit out with a single, downward motion (do not twist). Lift loaded cutter over an ungreased baking sheet and let biscuit drop, you may ease it along from top with a butter knife if necessary. Dip cutter in flour and cut another. Place the biscuits 1/2″ apart on the sheet. They will touch as they bake, making for soft sides and crisp tops and bottoms. You can place them further apart if you want crisp sides, but the biscuits will be drier in the center. Cut as many biscuits as you can from your first roll, then gather ends bits and press together as gently and with as little handling as possible. Level again and cut out another couple, form the last biscuit by hand from the leftovers.

Slide quickly into hot oven and bake for 9-10 minutes. (8 mins if you made a half batch). Resist opening oven till nearly done. They are done when the highest parts are a getting golden and there are no wet spots in the valleys between biscuits. Do not over bake or they will be hard and burnt on the bottom. Let cool for 2 minutes before lifting from sheet with a metal spatula into a napkin lined basket. Cover with clean cloth napkin until ready to serve but serve while still hot! If you have extras, freeze in ziploc bag as soon as possible and microwave for 30 seconds to serve.

– Denise Duffy, Music Maker Foundation co-founder (and biscuit maker extraordinaire)

*Note to Yankees: You may have to order this online, but don’t you dare substitute King Arthur and complain that your biscuits didn’t take flight! What is required for a tall, fluffy biscuit is the whitest, lightest, most refined of flours. Save your high protein and high fiber flours for crusty loaves. A proper biscuit isn’t health food – it’s heritage.