Email to Cat      

Mary Leigh's Buttermilk Biscuits

Source of Recipe

From "Tom Fitzmorris's New Orleans Food" by Tom Fitzmorris


Recipe Introduction

"Homemade buttermilk biscuits are our favorite breakfast at the Cool Water Ranch. For years, we made them almost every weekend. When she was still very small, my daughter Mary Leigh started helping me and wound up taking over the whole job. Then she left town, became a professional baker, and I'm back to making them myself. The recipe is not revolutionary. There are only three ingredients: self-rising flour (White Lily is by far the best), buttermilk, and butter. (We used to use Crisco, but what we now know about trans-fat made me convert to butter.)"

List of Ingredients

◦  6 Tbsp unsalted butter, softened
◦  3 cups self-rising flour
◦  1½ cups buttermilk


Recipe

Preheat the oven to 475° F.

Cut the butter into the flour with a wire whisk until the mixture resembles coarse cornmeal. A few small lumps are okay.

Blend in the buttermilk with light strokes of a kitchen fork. Continue lightly blending until the dough pulls away from the sides of the bowl. Add a little more milk, if necessary, to work all the dry flour at the bottom into a sticky, thoroughly damp dough.

Lightly grease a baking sheet or pizza pan with butter or shortening. Spoon out the dough with a large spoon into lumps about 3 inches high and 3 to 4 inches in diameter and drop them about 1 inch apart on the prepared baking sheet or pizza pan. Dip your fingers in water and mound the dough up a bit if necessary.

Bake until the little peaks on the biscuits start to brown, 10 to 14 minutes. Don't aim for a dark overall brown; that indicates overbaking.


Makes 6 to 10 biscuits