Bakin' Powder Biscuits

Sunday, November 07, 2010

Bakin’ Powder Biscuits

I’ve loved biscuits for breakfast since time immemorial.  Ma use to make ‘em now and again for breakfast, and I’d slice ‘em, add a chunk of butter then dunk ‘em in my coffee.  There’s another way to eat biscuits?  I think not!  Or I use to think such, but I learned to add sausage to the mix or jelly, but the old default method was a simple dunkin’ in coffee.

Of course biscuits and gravy is another whole menu item.  You’d have to consider coffee dunkin’ to be the appetizer, and then side orders of biscuits covered in thick sawmill gravy.  Cathead biscuits and sawmill gravy is a southern staple on the breakfast table.   Biscuits and gravy could even be the main dish. 

Just like usual, I get to talkin’ about one thing and next think you know, I’m across the fence, wanderin’ through the beans!  Ma’s biscuits were simple bakin’ powder biscuits.  I really don’t know another kind, except that hers had a top and bottom and just enough middle to allow the passin’ of a knife.  That’s the way Daddy liked ‘em an’ that’s the way she fixed ‘em; the rest is history. 

There comes a time when a feller leaves home and by gum, it happened to me.  Off and gone when I went off to school, and I never returned except to visit.  The first thing a man misses is his Ma’s cookin’.  I did in spades.  I learned a whole new way of eatin’; not that it was bad, but it just couldn’t replace “home cookin’,” even if it was cooked in someone else’s home.  You could say that too in my own home, because Ma wasn’t there to do it.  Here I go; crossin’ that fence again…

Eventually, I had to take matters in my own hand and experiment in the kitchen.  My first experiment was tantamount to an old scene out of “The Little Rascals.”  There was a “Men’s Breakfast” one Saturday down to Pawley’s Island Baptist Church, and I had the notion I’d volunteer to bring the biscuits.  I was excited.  Couldn’t wait.  Could taste Ma’s biscuits right then, complete with a thick slab of butter and drippin’ with coffee. 

Everybody has flour, and we did too.  But what to do with it was another matter.  I wouldn’t wait till Friday night to find out, now would I.  I find the cookbook an’ thank goodness there’s a “baking powder biscuits” recipe under the bread section.  It lists all the ingredients: flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda, shortening and milk.  I find ‘em all, except the shortenin’.  Fran, what’s shortenin’?  You laugh, but all I ever did was lick the batter, I didn’t make it.  Time I ever got to the kitchen, the mixin’ part was complete and the batter was bein’ poured into the bakin’ pan.  Note that this was when Granny was makin’ a cake, because I was usually still asleep when Ma made the biscuits, but there’d be that little tailin’ of dough that just wasn’t enough to make the next biscuit and just a little left to toss to the dog and bein’ the dog was outside, I got most of the leavin’s!  But back to the question, Fran was a Yankee, and poor thing didn’t know how to cook with shortenin’ or grease.  And me, I didn’t really care, because I was fed regular and it was good and fillin’ and that’s simply how it was.  Discussin’ it with her, I determined that cookin’ oil was just about the next best thing.  Do you know how far two tablespoons of oil goes, compared to two tablespoons of shortenin’?  Not far at all.  Not far at all! 

Anyhow, I’ve got all the dry parts mixed and I add that bit of oil, which wasn’t nearly what I was expectin’, but once you mixed in the milk, you had dough that looked normal.  Who was to know what dough felt like, but I have come to know there is that “little bit of bounce” that good dough has.  Where’s the rollin’ pin?  Not to be found in our house.  I’d as well have been lookin’ for a John Deere tractor as findin’ a rollin’ pin.  I look back on this episode and think, my but was every dish premixed or packaged?  I suppose there’s a way to do without bakin’, and I can’t say that I’ve made any headway in discoverin’ how to cook, because it just isn’t like I see on “Cookin’ with Paula Dean” today, which has replaced “Andy Griffith” as my favorite TV show! 

I made do with a tall glass.  I rolled it out to ½” and reached for the biscuit cutter, which is stored right there along side the rollin’ pin!  Darn, but this ain’t gittin’ any easier, and I’ve not got the first batch made yet an’ it’s goin’ on 8:00 PM.  I’m just experimentin’ here tonight an’ goin’ to make a fresh batch first thing in the mornin’.  I turn the glass up and use it for the biscuit cutter.  That’s fun, because there’s a poof of powder with every biscuit I cut!  Did I say this was just like out of “The Little Rascals?”  Pretty soon, there’s a dustin’ of flour on most flat spots in the kitchen.  I suppose cleanin’ the kitchen will give me somethin’ to do Saturday mornin’ after the breakfast!   I get the oven preheated to 450, slide the pan in and watch the clock like I’m a-waitin’ the “Second Comin’,” which is just 8 to 10 minutes away! 

I open the oven, and Lordy, Lordy, but ain’t they grand!  They look just like Ma’s biscuits, though they might be just a tiny bit thinner.  Perfect!  I’m so happy.  I pull out the pan and put the biscuits in the mixin’ bowl, just like Ma use to do, then throw the dish towel over top to keep ‘em warm, just like she did.  Phil did good!  Ooo, let me just sample one of these gems.  I fetch a knife out of the drawer…praise be, but we have knives just like common folk.  It’s wonderment sometimes how we do have most things in the kitchen, just not the bakin’ things!  I go to slice the biscuit, and it nearly crumbles in my hand, but it does slice with a tad extra effort.  The beginnings of “not good,” are quickly materializin’.  I take a bite and Lord have mercy, but I think I chipped a tooth!  What in God’s good name have I done?  Better yet, what have I not done!  Could it git any harder?  I’m not only devastated, but now, I’m in a panic.  It’s goin’ on 9:00 PM, and the first batch didn’t turn out well.  It didn’t end up bein’ biscuits, but more like hockey pucks.  In fact, a hockey puck might just have a touch of flexibility, if you hit it hard enough, and just like a puck, this one too, would leave a mark!

Must have been the way I way I mixed it.  Let’s try again.  I did.  Yes, I did, not once but twice more that night.  I had stuff a bird couldn’t eat.  It was shameful.  It was embarrassin’.  But it was my best effort, so I got up early and made a fresh batch, and off to church I go.  Needless to say, I was late and breakfast was about over, for I thought maybe I’d try twice more in the daylight hours, only to have “warm things” for the men’s breakfast. 

I put ‘em on the table and everyone grabbed on, and about all I could do was bow my head and pray, and squint out of the corner of my eye at their expression as they “broke a tooth!”  Bless their hearts, but they did the Christian thing and bragged and told me a polite as possible how I could’ve got the Litchfield Diner to have made a batch for me and very little cost!  Exceptin’ for Jim, and he sho’ ‘nuff bragged on how good my biscuits were.  Jim would smile with his mouth close, poor soul, because he was nearly as snaggle toothed as a feller could get.  I think he had to one tooth in the front and one eye tooth on one side and some black spots scatterd ‘round the rest of the places.  That was a mighty powerful tooth, for it was still there when he was done eatin’.  I don’t suppose that sweet smell of grapes on his breath meant anything much, but he was happy to have experienced a good southern Bakin’ Powder Biscuit.

Lookin’ back, it probably wasn’t the cookin’ oil, but the age of the bakin’ powder and bakin’ soda that did me in that day.  We’d moved in our construction travels three times since in the little over four years we’d been together, and those cans of bakin’ powder and soda had faithfully moved right along with us, the life of them long expired.