A Love Affair With Southern Cooking_ Recipes and Recollections - Jean Anderson [157]
3. Turn the dough onto a well-floured surface and knead lightly for about a minute. Shape the dough into a round 1½ inches thick, quarter lengthwise, then quarter crosswise so that you have four pieces of equal size. Roll each piece of dough into a ball and place in the skillet, arranging so that they don’t touch one another. Brush the tops of the biscuits with the remaining 1 tablespoon bacon drippings.
4. Slide the skillet onto the middle oven shelf and bake the biscuits for 30 to 35 minutes or until puffed and the color of pale parchment.
5. Serve hot. Note: I like to spoon hot chicken or sausage gravy over Cathead Biscuits, but some Southerners butter them and spread with blackberry jam or sweet sorghum.
RIZ BISCUITS
MAKES ABOUT 1¼ DOZEN BISCUITS
While researching my American Century Cookbook back in the 1990s, I had the devil’s own time tracing Angel Biscuits (which follow) back to their source. They seemed to have surfaced thirty or forty years earlier as the South’s hot new biscuit, and recipes for them began popping up everywhere. It was my good friend Jeanne Voltz who showed me the light. An editor, cookbook author, and food historian of note, Jeanne kept a library of food facts in her head. When I asked her about Angel Biscuits, she said that her Alabama family had made something called Riz Biscuits (colloquial for risen biscuits), then passed along the recipe. Like Angel Biscuits, they contain three leavenings: baking powder (in the self-rising flour), baking soda, and yeast.
2½ cups sifted all-purpose self-rising flour
2 tablespoons sugar
¼ teaspoon baking soda
1/3 cup firmly packed lard or vegetable shortening (it should be ice cold)
One ¼-ounce package active dry yeast dissolved in ¼ cup very warm water (105° to 115° F.)
1/3 to ½ cup buttermilk
2 tablespoons butter, melted
1. Whisk the flour, sugar, and baking soda together in a large mixing bowl; then, using a pastry blender, cut in the lard until the texture of small peas. Quickly fork in the yeast mixture and just enough buttermilk to make a soft but workable dough.
2. Turn onto a floured surface and knead 4 to 5 times until smooth. With a floured rolling pin, roll the dough to a thickness of ¼ inch, then cut into rounds using a floured 2½-inch biscuit cutter. Press any scraps together, roll, and cut into rounds as before.
3. Beginning with the rerolled-and-cut rounds, brush half of the total number with melted butter and space 2 inches apart on ungreased baking sheets. Top with the remaining rounds and brush with the last of the melted butter.
4. Cover with a clean, dry cloth and let rise in a warm, draft-free spot for about 45 minutes or until doubled in bulk. Toward the end of rising, preheat the oven to 375° F.
5. When the biscuits are fully risen, bake in the upper third of the oven for about 15 minutes or until nicely browned. Serve hot—no additional butter needed.
ANGEL BISCUITS
MAKES ABOUT 2½ DOZEN BISCUITS
I remember exactly when I first encountered these celestial biscuits. It was in the early 1970s as I prowled the South in search of great grass-roots cooks to feature in a new series I was writing for Family Circle magazine. Through county home demonstration agents, I obtained the names of the local women who’d won prizes at the county and state fairs. I then interviewed two or three of them in each area before choosing my subject. And all, it seemed, couldn’t stop talking about “this fantastic new biscuit recipe” that was all the rage—something called Angel Biscuits. The local cookbooks I perused also featured Angel Biscuits, often two or three versions of them in a single volume. Later, when I began researching my American Century Cookbook, I vowed to learn the origin of these feathery biscuits. My friend Jeanne Voltz, for years the Woman’s Day food editor,