New Orleans Food Questions And Comments

Mary Leigh's Buttermilk Biscuits

Homemade buttermilk biscuits are our favorite breakfast at the Cool Water Ranch. For years, we've made them almost every weekend. When she was still very small, my daughter Mary Leigh started helping me. Now she's completely taken over the job. 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-fats made me convert to butter as the shortening.)

3 cups self-rising flour
6 Tbs. butter, softened
1 1/2 cups buttermilk

Preheat oven to 475 degrees.

1. Measure flour into a large bowl. Cut butter into the flour and stir with a wire whisk until mixture resembles coarse cornmeal. It's okay for there to be a few small lumps.

2. Blend in the buttermilk with light strokes of a kitchen fork. Continue lightly blending until the dough leaves the side 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.

3. Spoon out the dough with a large spoon into lumps about three inches high and three to four inches in diameter. Dip your fingers in water and mound the dough up a bit if necessary.

4. Bake 10 to 14 minutes in the preheated 475-degree oven. They're ready when the little peaks on the biscuits begin to brown. Don't look for a dark overall brown; that indicates overbaking.

Makes six to ten biscuits.

Revised 3/29/08


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