Homemade Biscuits

Being a Southern girl, making biscuits from scratch is like a right of passage. In my family the tradition of making biscuits from scratch was passed from my great-grandmother to my grandmother and many of my aunts learned to make them by watching my grandmother. I once asked my grandmother to give me the recipe for her biscuits and she told me she couldn’t give me the recipe. She said I’d have to watch her to learn. I know I watched her hundreds of times mixing the ingredients for the biscuits with measuring out the flour only. Everything else was done by eyeing the ingredients and just knowing and feeling what worked. She also patted out her biscuits by hand. She never rolled them. I didn’t take the time to really study her technique and I hate that I didn’t. What I do remember are those three ingredients she used, self-rising flour, buttermilk and lard. Those ingredients and years of technique and love created the lightest, fluffiest biscuits. Biscuits that caused a fight or 2 amongst family members while growing up. I hope you try this recipe. Allow yourself to learn your own technique as I am growing to learn my own as well. I’d also love to hear your own biscuit making stories.