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Touch of Grace Biscuits

Source of Recipe

From "Biscuit Bliss" by James Villas


Recipe Introduction

"Shirley Corriher, author of Cookwise, is recognized by many today as the South's leading biscuit lady and, without doubt, nobody is more passionate about biscuits. Having had trouble for years reproducing her Georgia grandmother's flaky biscuits (just as I still have trouble making my mother's perfect ones), she relates how the older lady admonished, 'Honey, I guess you forgot to add a touch of grace.' Since I'm not crazy about any sweetened plain raised biscuit, and also feel that brushing the rounds with melted butter before baking (as Shirley does), affects the outer texture of the biscuit too much, I've modified the recipe somewhat to suit my own taste. In any case, these are no doubt some of the best hand-formed buttermilk biscuits you'll ever sample, the main secret (or 'touch of grace') being the unusually wet dough, which creates more steam in the oven and hence a very light biscuit. The trick to dealing with the sticky dough is not only to sprinkle a little flour over each lump as the biscuits are formed, but to keep your hands well-floured as well. Shirley, like myself, is adamant about using only Southern self-rising flour for these biscuits, but concedes that, if absolutely necessary, an acceptable substitute is 1 cup all-purpose flour, ½ cup cake flour, and ½ teaspoon baking powder. As for cutting instead of breaking the cooled biscuits apart, I'll let her argue with Southern purists on that touchy score."

List of Ingredients

â—¦ 1 ½ cups Southern self-rising flour (such as White Lily, Martha White, or Red Band)
â—¦ 2 teaspoons sugar
â—¦ â…› teaspoon baking soda
â—¦ â…“ teaspoon salt
â—¦ 3 tablespoons chilled vegetable shortening
â—¦ 1 to 1 ¼ cups buttermilk, as needed
â—¦ 1 cup bleached all-purpose flour for shaping


Recipe

Preheat the oven to 475° F. Grease an 8-inch round cake pan and set aside.

In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the self-rising flour, sugar, baking soda, and salt. Add the shortening and rub it in with your fingertips till there are no shortening lumps larger than a big pea. Add 1 cup of the buttermilk, stir lightly, add more buttermilk as necessary to form a sticky dough, and let stand 2 to 3 minutes (the dough will be very wet).

Pour the all-purpose flour onto a plate and flour your hands well. Spoon a biscuit-size lump of wet dough onto the flour and sprinkle flour over the dough to coat the outside. Shape the lump into a soft round with your hands, shaking off excess flour. Make more rounds till the dough is used up, arrange them tightly against each other in the prepared pan, and bake in the upper third of the oven till lightly browned, about 15 minutes. Let cool 1 or 2 minutes in the pan, then turn the biscuits out and cut them apart. Serve hot.

Makes about 10 biscuits


• For feather-light biscuits, a wet, sticky dough is best since it produces plenty of steam in the hot oven. To handle the dough, lightly flour both the dough and your hands.