How to Make Biscuits

We weren’t able to share Thanksgiving with my parents and other relatives in my childhood hometown this year.  If we had, my wife and I probably would have hosted the event.  I would have made the biscuits.  As it turned out, my mother assumed dinner prep responsibilities, but asked our daughter if she could take on the biscuit role.  My biscuit prowess is the stuff of legend, so she (our daughter) asked if I’d send her my secret recipe.  I think since I typed it at the end of a long, tiring day and was apparently feeling punchy, it ended up being a little unusual.  I share it with you now to show that a literary life can include humor, or at least, as in my case, attempts to be funny.  Try writing normal things in odd ways or odd things in normal ways. 

Biscuit Recipe

ok.  here ya go.  ta-da.  ready or not.

Put one tablespoon of vinegar in one cup of milk and let it sit whilst you mix the dry ingredients which are as follows.  Pay attention!

2 cups of flour
4 teaspoons of baking powder
1 half teaspoon of salt
1 tablespoon sugar

You got that?  Now combine the dry ingredients.  Go ahead.  Mix ’em.  No.  Really.  Do it.  Do it now!

Take one third cup of shortening.  Or was that two thirds of a cup?  No, I really think it was one third.  Yeah.  one third.  But make it a generous one third, o.k.?  Not level. Gospel Measure.  Plenty.  Then cut the shortening into the flour until the shortening looks like small peas.  Not green, no, no, but the size of small peas.  (that last bit is a sort of old timey, grandma, down home on the farm piece of advice, lore passed down generation to generation.) 

When you’ve cut the shortening into the flour, pour in the now soured milk.  Actually, a cup of buttermilk would be better, but what sane person keeps buttermilk on hand?  I mean, honestly!  So that’s why I’m telling you the next best thing: soured milk.

Now mix until the dry ingredients are all wet.  Add flour if it’s too wet.  Take away flour if it’s too dry (just kidding about that last one…)  Once the dough is dryish, dry enough to sort of dump out of the bowl, then dump the dough out of the bowl onto a floured surface.  Then knead the dough.  Need the dough?  Hard to describe.  You’ve watched me often enough.  Make it so that when you lightly press down on a half inch or slightly more slab of dough and it comes back up again, it’s ready.  The tops should be dry, smooth, sleek, lovely.  No more sticky.  Cut out biscuit-sized rounds of dough.  Put the biscuits on a greased sheet and… Oh Darn It…I forgot to tell you to pre-heat the oven to 425.  Now you have to let the biscuits sit for a few minutes (it’s better to pop them in as soon as they’re on the sheet…maybe next time…) until the oven gets to 425 degrees fahrenheit.  Javohl!  When the oven gets up to speed, or temp, rather, put the biscuits in and cook them until they are golden brown, lovely, nicey, nice, nice, about 15 minutes or maybe 18 or 13 or whatever.

I s’pose that’s about it for the biscuits.  Speaking of lore, I’ve been making these sons of guns since I was… wait… fifteen?  Oh My Gosh!  I should declare 2014 when I turn 55 the Year of the Biscuit, celebrating my 40th anniversary of biscuit making.  Ask your grandmother why I started making biscuits.  Read her these instructions… she’ll recognize it as exactly, precisely how she taught me.

Amen