May 14: National Buttermilk Biscuit Day

Biscuits are a food that people can seriously get into a fight over.  Everyone firmly believes that their biscuits or their mom's/aunt's/grandmother's/dad's/uncle's/etc biscuits are the best ever.  I think the only thing anyone can agree on is that biscuits are best served warm, right out of the oven.  I've used this recipe from Alton Brown multiple times - first for a class and then every time after that was because I really liked the recipe.  (Plus, I think the notes from his grandmother are absolutely charming.)

While Alton Brown's recipe is a very traditional, plain buttermilk biscuit recipe, some buttermilk biscuit recipes allow the addition of honey, cheese, herbs, or even bacon.  I'm partial to keeping biscuits plain and then topping them with herbed butter or honey, but to each her/his own.

In addition to some buttermilk recipes, Pinch My Salt provides some excellent tips on making perfect biscuits and a very good explanation about how important the choice of flour is.  I very much agree with Cooks.com that the first thing anyone should know about biscuits is: don't over-work the dough.  As part of the class for which I made biscuits, I had to show and explain what happens to over-worked biscuit dough.  Over-working the dough results in less fluffy biscuits that just don't rise as much.  In the photo, you can see that the biscuits on the right are from the first cut and the biscuits on the left were the last ones to be cut, after I reworked the scraps and handled the dough some more..

So remember when you make you buttermilk biscuits for today - don't over-work the dough and they're best served warm.