Are you in the North and having trouble making biscuits?

[DavidNorcross]

Love making biscuits. My mother in laws recipe handed down.

[SheilaAnn]

Hello gorgeous!!!

[mrichie1229]

Please send me a dozen or so. I have some homemade strawberry preserves that would pair nicely with them.

[Purc]

I'll show my Southern roots by saying I had a relative who made great Cat Head biscuits almost everyday.

[RonB]

One of my aunts stayed on the farm and made biscuits from scratch every day. On Sundays, they would have store bought white bread as a treat.

My mother moved to the city where she met and married my dad. We had toast every day and she made biscuits for a treat on Sundays.

[jfmorris]

My mother and grandmother always made amazing biscuits. My mom still does at 83, but I guess I don't get them as often! My dad makes the gravy...

My wife has made some good attempts at biscuits over the years, and I'll stop there! Her mom is a horrible cook, and she has surpassed her mother by miles. I've never tried my hand at biscuits...

I have been buying White Lily all-purpose and bread flour lately for making my sourdough, just because it's a brand I've seen all my life that I know I saw in the pantry growing up. I've not bought any of the self rising as I don't want it for bread baking. I do have baking powder of course. May need to give biscuits a try one day soon. But it might be dicey, as it may offend SWMBO if I made better biscuits than her....

[jfmorris]

Well well. The back of the bag of White Lily all-purpose flour in the pantry, that I used to feed my sourdough starter last night, has a biscuit recipe, which calls for a teaspoon of baking powder with the all-purpose. I'll have to give it a try one day soon!

[JoeSousa]

My wife used to suck at making biscuits. When we moved to Jacksonville she decided that since she was in the South she should learn how to make biscuits. So she made multiple recipes, took parts of a bunch of different methods and ingredients, and came up with a pretty great biscuit.

After 5 years we moved back to the Northwest and a couple weeks before one Thanksgiving she said "do you think anyone would want to buy frozen biscuits?". Of course I said no. Fast forward a couple years and now she has commercial kitchen space she rents out one night a week, 6 ladies that come in to make biscuits and biscuit adjacent products (scones, biscuit cinnamon rolls, biscuit topped cobblers, etc.) and she sells many hundreds of biscuits a week. Flakey, layery, buttery, and delicious.

I read that article (or maybe one very, very similar) a few years back and did some digging and it turns out much of the wheat grown in Washington State is soft wheat. So that might explain how her recipe from the South (she didn't use White Lily down there) is still good up in the Northwest.

[Dan Deter]

That's a good looking biscuit!

[mrichie1229]

Yummy! I agree that the look of these biscuits is incredible. No wonder she sells them by the hundreds!

I'd love to see her recipe. Or because I'm lazy, does she ship them?

[JoeSousa]

mrichie1229 No shipping right now but it is something we have looked into. Since they are frozen it makes shipping quite expensive.

[MattTheGR8]

White Lily is available in my local grocery store here in Iowa, and has been for several years. Today it was even on sale! I prefer the all-purpose to the self-rising and add my own leaveners and salt.



If you can't find it, The Bread Bible recommends cutting bleached all-purpose flour with cake flour to reduce the overall protein content. The ratio is 32% cake flour to 68% all-purpose.



This is a particularly timely subject for me as I've been trying different biscuit recipes the last few weeks. Grating frozen butter seems to work for me, then tossing it with the flour. A few folds while shaping also creates nice layers. My motivation is to win a new biscuits and gravy contest at the state fair this summer. In addition to nailing the biscuits, I also hope to have my own sausage recipe ready by August.

[SheilaAnn]

....wait..... hard cooked egg yolks?

[MattTheGR8]

SheilaAnn Yes. On another page the instructions tell you to force the cooked yolks through a fine mesh strainer. It makes the yolks into fine particles that end up as tiny yellow flecks in the finished biscuits. She's trying to add another fat to the mix, but they don't do much for me.

[JCBBQ]

I’d love to hear what your final/best version is! Good luck.

[hoovarmin]

Biscuits were a daily thing growing up in the south. I never make them now cause I shun carbs, but I love them.

[JCBBQ]

Well I went out and found some White Lily at Wally World. This Yankee, who lived in Louisiana for 6 years but has never made his own, had to give it a whirl. I followed the Southern Living recipe and I have to say they were delicious. HOWEVER….looking at your pics above my effort definitely falls into the JV category. But, something fun to work on.

[JCBBQ]

Thanks RonB !

[hoovarmin]

The biscuits look terrific, but you NAILED it on the scrambled eggs

[JCBBQ]

Thanks hoovarmin !!

[RonB]

I thought I had posted the recipe I use, but I guess not, so here it is:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3u7ePp2hJGw

2 tips:

Don't overwork the dough.
Use a sharp cutter and don't twist it - straight down and straight up.

And if you like Red Lobster's Cheddar Bay biscuits, look them up on youtube and use the above recipe for the biscuits.

[JCBBQ]

Ron, there is a huge difference in the color and texture of the White Lily from AP flour. Super interesting! Thanks for putting biscuits on my radar! Now I want these on my chicken pot pie!!