GypsyPlate Recipes
'Biscuits Are Like People. They're Better When They Rise Together.'
Toni Tipton-Martin has either written or shepherded some of the most important culinary works of this century. Her mission has been to celebrate African American cookbook history. With the publication of The Jemima Code, Toni's annotated bibliography of her extensive African American cookbook collection, she reshaped the landscape of known sources for historians, chefs, and home cooks.
In her role as editor-in-chief of Cook's Country, she collaborated with Cook's Country and America's Test Kitchen executive editor Morgan Bolling on an enormously important book, When Southern Women Cook: History, Lore and 300 Recipes with Contributions from 70 Women Writers. She joined us most recently to discuss the legacy of women in barbecuing and outdoor grilling.
Toni Tipton-Martin has either written or shepherded some of the most important culinary works of the 21st century. Photo courtesy of America's Test Kitchen.
Evan Kleiman: You had an experience in the summer of 1999 that focused on a meeting you were invited to attend. Tell us a bit about what happened at that meeting for you and how it galvanized you in terms of creating a focus for your work moving forward.
Toni Tipton-Martin: Let me just thank you for giving me the opportunity to talk about this book. I humbly say that it's a great book but it's a book that's really timely and really important, too. Some years ago, I was invited to the organizing meeting for a group that ultimately became the Southern Foodways Alliance. We were invited by John Edgerton, a Southern writer, journalist, and scholar. He had this notion that the full story of Southern food had not been told, that there had been so many people omitted from the discussion and the recipes.
He brought together 50 passionate people at Southern Living's headquarters in Birmingham. I was this outlier. I'm from Southern California, raised on the beach in LA and I really didn't fit in with this group, except that I had a passion for Southern women, the stories, in particular, of African American women who had been marginalized or erased or their contributions stereotyped. It troubled me a lot because I have a grandmother who fit that profile, and those caricatures didn't reflect her at all. So I was really excited to be invited to this group but not sure what role I might play.
What was interesting about it is that because I was an outsider, I wasn't as invested in the recipe development part of the Southern food story. I was interested in the more human side. All of these people who were gathered — we're talking about Paul Prudhomme, Nathalie Dupree — they are recipe people. And that ultimately turned out to be my strength because I was interested in telling the stories of people and, in particular, women.
I became a go to for a lot of the women in the organization and women in the South, generally, who would whisper to me their frustrations about the way that their stories were being told. So while I was focused on researching African American food history, here was this whole other group of women who are feeling some of the same frustrations and sometimes anger, about the ways in which women are portrayed historically or not. I didn't quite know what I was going to do about any of that. I just held on to their stories and my connection to them until I had the opportunity to do something with it.
Pimento cheese spread can be an appetizer or the filling in a simple but satisfying sandwich. Photo courtesy of America's Test Kitchen.
One of the reasons this book is so interesting is that there's two primary threads that run through it. There are the recipes and the contemporary essays by women writers. More than 70 Southern women took part, and they range from food writers, authors, journalists, historians, chefs, aficionados, and culture keepers. Just to give us a bird's eye view, what were some of the topics that are covered by these modern women? And can you think of one or two essays in particular that speak to our current moment?
Some of the stories are very simple. We talk about the difference between White Lily and Martha White flour. We tell you about the woman who is responsible for that beautiful red wax drip on a maker's mark bottle. We talk about the women who formed cottage industries in their homes by using their expertise to prepare dishes that they could sell to create economic independence for themselves and their families.
One of the most compelling stories was written by Virginia Willis.Virginia is a longtime food expert. She's a chef. She worked for Martha Stewart and was trained by Nathalie Dupree but she's also a gay Southern woman, and she spent most of her life as an overweight woman. So we talked about the mystique of the Southern Belle and the fact that she was always represented in film and in history as a thin woman, a frail, fragile, demure, delicate woman. Virginia tried to help us understand the conflict and the tension between being portrayed, at one moment, in that way and in another moment, being portrayed as the best cook and the person who makes the best biscuits. It's such a great story.
I love that essay so much. I mean it. I think it will speak to so many women. I also love what she says about biscuits, "Biscuits are like people. They are better when they rise together."
I love that Virginia shares with us something that she learned from Nathalie, because Nathalie is known for a similar food metaphor for the expression of women supporting one another and bringing women together in the kitchen. It's called the "pork chop theory," and her words are, "One pork chop in a pan goes dry but when you add a second pork chop, the fat from one feeds the other."
This Louisiana-style cornbread dressing is so good you won't want to save it for Thanksgiving. Photo courtesy of America's Test Kitchen.
I love that!
Isn't it beautiful? And so between the two of them, we get these incredible expressions of this mystique and a way that women can support and encourage one another in times of trouble, despite the ways that we're portrayed in the broader community.
Recipe wise, that Virginia Willis essay links to the Pat-in-the-Pan Biscuits. Could you really quickly describe these biscuits?
Yes, these are a version of what most people in the South will know of as a cream biscuit. When you make cream biscuits, they are very, very wet. You can almost spoon them up with a spoon and make them like a drop biscuit. But instead of doing that, Shirley Corriher, who I think was the first one we know of, to really popularize this recipe of the way that they're made by hand, she rolls them in additional flour.
So instead of kneading the flour into the dough, you kind of roll it in at the end, after you've gotten this really wet mixture, and then you pat that into a baking pan, and what comes out of the oven is this crisp, edged, sort of crunchy biscuit on the outside. Then it's flaky and just really decadent on the inside.
Bourbon bread pudding is a beloved Southern Dessert. Photo courtesy of America's Test Kitchen.
Those Shirley Corriher biscuits are unbelievable. I've made them so many times.
Yeah, and I probably should correct and say that they're not going to be flaky in the traditional sense. I guess you would say they're fluffy.
They're so light.
Yes, they're light and fluffy but here they have this amazing crisp crust on the outside and I happen to be one of those that really loves, whatever the baked good is, I want the part that was attached to the outside of the pan where the heat comes in contact with it. But there's something about the chemistry of this platting of the batter into the pan that gives you that incredible surface all the way around.
Love that. Turning to recipes, the preserving and pickling chapter is really wonderful. I always think about preserves and pickles as being so linked to Southern foodways. I know that I'm drawn to candied jalapenos. They're relatively easy to make and easier to eat and people love getting little jars of those red and green nuggets. But I'm wondering if you can think of another recipe that is delicious but has a story to tell, maybe the watermelon rind.
Well, we love both of those recipes because of their focus on women. In the case of the jalapenos, it's actually a young girl who is the creator of that recipe. But in the case of the watermelon rind pickles, we tell the story of Abby Fisher. She is the author of what we now know to be, the second cookbook published by an African American woman in 1881. That book was called What Mrs. Fisher Knows About Old Southern Cooking.
What I love about Abby Fisher's story, which makes us want to make watermelon rind pickles even more, is the fact that when she was no longer enslaved in the south, she and her husband moved to the Bay Area in California and began a pickles and preserves manufacturing company.
So again, we hear these stories that African American women were not intelligent, they didn't have proficiencies, and yet, making pickles is a chemical process that requires some bit of knowledge or you could harm yourself and the people who consume your product. And here, Abby Fisher won state fair prizes for her pickles and preserves, and she published a book in 1881 to validate her existence and remind us that she had been here.
"When Southern Women Cook: History, Lore, and 300 Recipes with Contributions from 70 Women Writers" celebrates the women who laid the foundations of Southern food and their innovative torchbearers. Photo courtesy of America's Test Kitchen.
I love that story so much. So, Toni, let's end with some sweetness. The Celebration Suites chapter is so enticing. Would you like to pick a cake to share with us?
I would love to share with you one of both Morgan and my favorite cakes in the book. It's called the Porter Plum Pudding Layer Cake. This cake is an adaptation of a recipe created by a free woman of color in Charleston who had her own catering company. Her name was Eliza Seymour Lee, and she was so successful that her home is still standing and occupied on Trad Street in Charleston, and she was known for her plum pudding.
Her recipe actually still exists. One of her descendants, Robin Griffith, is in possession of this recipe, and I knew Robin, and met with her to talk about the possibility that we would adapt this recipe for modern use, and that's an important thing for us to talk about.
When we think about these stories, they're not just a look back at history or an opportunity to feel nostalgic, but what we really wanted was for people to engage with the history as well as the food. So we brought Eliza's plum pudding recipe into our test kitchen, and one of our test cooks adapted it into a layer cake that will remind you of carrot cake. It's dense, it's coated with a beautiful cream cheese frosting, and it has a plum porter glaze that is drizzled around the edges to give it just an additional decadent sweetness, if it wasn't already sweet enough. It is spectacular on a holiday table. We just absolutely love this cake, absolutely at the holidays, but any time of year in celebration of Eliza Lee.
Most people in the South will know these Pat-in-the-Pan Biscuits as a cream biscuit. Photo courtesy of America's Test Kitchen.
Pat-in-the-Pan Buttermilk BiscuitsMakes 9 biscuits
Total Time: 1½ hours
When chef Virginia Willis did a demonstration at Cook's Country in August 2018, the Southern cookbook queen left us with characteristically beautiful words: "Biscuits are like people; they are better when they rise together." More than poetry, though, this sentiment referred to her preferred technique of baking biscuits touching each other on a baking sheet so they physically push each other up in the oven for a higher rise. Her demo inspired our own recipe for pat-in-the-pan biscuits.
Following Willis's lead, we use low-protein cake flour for tenderness, and baking powder and baking soda for lightness and lift. We pinch bits of cold butter into these dry ingredients; the butter pieces melt in the dough during baking, producing steam that creates a fluffy interior crumb. We follow a tried-and-true Southern method for patting biscuit dough in a pan and scoring it so these biscuits can also rise together.
We developed this recipe using Softasilk cake flour and a metal baking pan. This recipe can easily be doubled to yield 15 biscuits: Use a 13 by 9-inch baking pan and extend the baking time by about 15 minutes.
Ingredients Cut 10 tablespoons butter into 1/2-inch pieces and freeze until chilled, about 15 minutes. Let 1 tablespoon butter sit at room temperature to soften. Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 450 degrees. Grease 8-inch square baking pan with remaining 1 tablespoon butter.
Whisk flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt together in bowl. Add chilled butter to flour mixture and smash butter between your fingertips into pea-size pieces. Gently stir in buttermilk until no dry pockets of flour remain. Using rubber spatula, transfer dough to prepared pan.
Lightly sprinkle extra flour evenly over dough to prevent sticking. Using your floured hands, pat dough into even layer and into corners of pan. Using bench scraper sprayed with vegetable oil spray, cut dough into 9 equal squares (2 cuts by 2 cuts), but do not separate. Bake until golden brown on top, about 30 minutes.
Let biscuits cool in pan for 5 minutes. Using thin metal spatula, slide biscuits onto wire rack. Brush tops with softened butter. Let cool for 10 minutes. Pull biscuits apart at cuts and serve warm.
Recipe courtesy of America's Test Kitchen. All rights reserved.
How To Make Your Best Batch Of Biscuits – The Denver Post
If there were a personality test for biscuits, it would look something like this: a map of the United States filled with pins, dusted with flour and streaked with butter, with a big honking question mark superimposed over the whole thing.
Because there is no one perfect biscuit: There's just the biscuit that's perfect for you.
Unlike, say, a macaron or even a bagel, biscuits lend themselves particularly well to tweaks to suit your taste. Sure, there's chemistry and intertwining causes and effects at work, and we'll get to all that, but a little well-thought-out experimentation is welcome.
"When you go to make biscuits, I think you need to know what you want," says Martin Philip, head baker at King Arthur Flour. His history is so intertwined with the baked good that the first recipe in his cookbook, "Breaking Bread: A Baker's Journey Home in 75 Recipes," is for biscuits.
So what do you want? The biscuit matrix covers fluffy and tender to flaky and sturdy enough for a sandwich. You might want them tall, maybe a little tangy or decadently buttery. You could go the drop-biscuit route, bust out the rolling pin or practice your folding skills.
Here's everything you need to consider.
FlourCookbook author and Southern food ambassador Nathalie Dupree swears by White Lily Flour so much that she brought her own bag to our Food Lab.
Cooks like Dupree treasure self-rising White Lily (it has salt and leavening in it already) for its fine-milled texture and low-protein content (8 to 10 percent), which lead to especially tender biscuits. Flour with lower protein forms less gluten when it comes into contact with liquid in the form of the water in butter, or your dairy of choice. More protein means more gluten, which means a chewier texture.
Ayeshah Abuelhiga advocates a middle-of-the-road approach with all-purpose flour (10 to 12 percent protein). The founder and CEO of Washington's Mason Dixie Biscuit says her team started testing recipes with pastry and cake flour, which have even less protein than White Lily, but the crew found the results too inconsistent and caky, and too weak for a sandwich.
Bread flour's high protein content makes it a no-go for biscuits.
LiquidPhoto for The Washington Post by Stacy Zarin Goldberg; food styling by Bonnie S. Benwick/The Washington Post.
For flaky biscuits, use your fingers to flatten the butter into "leaves" that are still visible in the dough.This is where the other part of the gluten equation comes into play; just like flour, liquid will help determine tenderness.
Up to a certain extent, more water means more gluten. If you're working with all-purpose flour, use less liquid. (A wetter dough is more suited to fluffy drop biscuits, which we'll get to later.)
When selecting and working with your liquid, keep these tips in mind:
Rise: Buttermilk's tangy flavor and thick texture are enough to recommend it, but its acidity also gives the baking soda and/or powder something to react with, Philip says. A more vigorous reaction means a higher rise. (Remember those vinegar-and-baking-soda volcanoes in school?) If you're using milk, lemon juice can help create a similar reaction.
Richness: While developing a scone recipe, Philip says he had a "light bulb" moment. Using buttermilk gave him the flavor he wanted but not the texture. He swapped the buttermilk for half-and-half, and the additional fat resulted in an especially tender scone. You'll get similar results in a biscuit, especially if you step up to cream.
The right mix: For tender results, use a wide bowl and stir the liquid in until it's just incorporated. You may need to dial back the liquid if you're in a warm, humid environment or add a bit when it's cool or dry. In making Philip's recipe (below) in our Food Lab, I consistently found the dough too crumbly to handle. I adjusted the amount of buttermilk. Too much and the dough was sticky and gluey, but just a tablespoon more allowed me to get the dough from the bowl to the counter as a shaggy yet relatively dry mass instead of as a pile of crumbs. Dry bits will be incorporated as you shape the dough.
FatA buttery biscuit owes its melt-in-your mouth texture to fat, which tenderizes the dough by interfering with the formation of gluten.
"What I hate is a doughy biscuit that doesn't have enough butter in it," says Tom Douglas, the chef-restaurateur behind Seattle's Serious Biscuits. (The biscuit recipe in "The Dahlia Bakery Cookbook," which Douglas co-wrote with his company's quality-control manager, Shelley Lance, calls for three sticks of butter for a 20-biscuit batch.)
Philip also prefers the flavor and texture that butter imparts. Shortening has no water, which is key for producing the steam that helps lift the biscuits. Butter, by contrast, has almost 20 percent water. Shortening "also really has no flavor," he says.
Lard, like shortening, is 100 percent fat. Erika Council, a food writer who runs the Bomb Biscuits pop-up in Atlanta, says her best biscuits are made with lard, "hands down." They're especially tender in the middle while still managing to hold together. The key, however, is finding good lard, which Council can do because she sources hers from her best friend's barbecue spot.
If you're struggling to get a tender biscuit, the answer is almost always more fat and less moisture. And don't forget that fat can come from your liquid: The cream biscuit recipe below, from Cook's Illustrated, is one example of how well it can work on its own.
For a last touch of richness and flavor, consider brushing melted butter onto your biscuits. Brushing before baking gave me a darker color and crisper texture on top. My tasters and I decided we liked a coating of melted butter as soon as the biscuits came out of the oven. I used salted butter for something one taster deemed "the Popeyes effect."
TemperatureAs with all baking, management of temperature is key. Right from the beginning.
Cool ingredients: If the butter starts to melt as you're mixing the dough, water moves into the flour, forming gluten. The goal is to keep the butter as cold as possible before the dough goes into the oven, so try refrigerating your dry ingredients and butter. When the butter melts in the oven, it gives off steam that creates flake and lift.
Chill the dough: Chef Marjorie Meek-Bradley of Washington tavern St. Anselm has earned a cult following for her tall, flaky biscuits. She refrigerates her dough – which is made with frozen, grated butter – several times, between the folds she executes for guaranteed layers (more on that below). I tried it with 20- to 30-minute rests in the fridge, which gave me dramatic layers.
Hot oven: With a relatively short bake time, a hot oven gives you an initial blast that activates the leavener (double-acting baking powder starts working when exposed to liquid and heat) and quickly melts the butter to create steam. For Philip, a hot oven is 425 degrees. For the Cook's Illustrated cream biscuit recipe, it's:450. For Douglas's uber buttery version, it's 475.
Even out the heat: Avoid scorching the bottoms of the biscuits by baking on a lined sheet in the upper third of the oven. Knowing whether your oven has hot or cool spots is helpful, but you can make up for them by rotating the sheet from front to back during baking. And use the convection feature if you have one. The fan circulates hot air, helping you achieve an even bake.
Know when the biscuits are done: Look at the color. Philip wants to see a golden top, and signs of browning on the bottom and sides of the biscuits. Browning means better flavor. "You need to have the kiss of the oven," he says.
Technique and tipsPhoto for The Washington Post by Stacy Zarin Goldberg; food styling by Bonnie S. Benwick/The Washington Post.
Twisting a cutter will yield squat biscuits with poorly defined layers, such as the one on the right.How you form and arrange your biscuits has as much impact as what you put in them.
Flaky or fluffy? If your goal is flaky, then folding your dough, as you would in puff pastry, is the way to go. Council starts by cutting her dough square into thirds so she can stack it and create immediate layers before she proceeds with a few rounds of folds. If you prefer a fluffy, craggy biscuit that you can tear apart and treat more like a dinner roll, try a drop biscuit.
Building height: In addition to folded layers and a hot oven, baking the biscuits closer together can make them taller, because as they share heat, it enhances the steam effect. When I tried this with the biscuits a finger-width apart, I got a more dramatic rise and more consistent color on top than with batches with more space between them. The tradeoff: less browning on the edges and a texture that's more steamed than flaky. (Cathead biscuits, baked so they bump into one another, are the epitome of this method.)
Clean cuts: The sharp edges of your chef's knife, bench scraper or biscuit cutter and a straight-down (no twisting!) cutting motion contribute to tall biscuits. Rotating my cutter caused the layers to lose their definition, leading to a squatter biscuit.
Follow a recipe first: "Make sure that what you're doing is a solid representation of a solid recipe," Philip says, and then design your perfect biscuit. People who have been making biscuits for decades, like Dupree, have the knowledge and muscle memory to literally pour out flour and cream without measuring exact amounts and end up with a beautiful result. The rest of us at least need to start with known quantities (preferably measured by weight) and some guidance.
No matter how you get there, everyone agrees: Biscuits are best eaten warm out of the oven.
"Biscuits should be a daily thing," says Philip. "It's that thing that should be made at the minute by the person there. You're capturing a moment with a biscuit."
Now is the time for you to seize that moment.
Flaky Butter Biscuits8-12 servings
Recipe notes: Depending on the temperature and humidity of your kitchen, you may need to use more or less buttermilk. You don't want the dough to be crumbly, but it should start to hold together in the bowl without being gluey. If you wish to make round biscuits, you'll need a 2-inch round cutter. To cut rectangular biscuits, a metal bench scraper works well.
Ingredients
Steps
Step 1: Cut the cold butter into 1/8-inch-thick slices; refrigerate until you're ready to make the dough. Whisk together the flour, salt, baking powder and baking soda in a mixing bowl, and refrigerate that as well. Position a rack in the upper third of the oven; preheat to 425 degrees. Lightly grease a rimmed baking sheet, or line it with parchment paper or a silicone liner.
Step 2: Add the cold butter pieces to the chilled dry ingredients, tossing them until they are evenly coated. Press the butter pieces between your thumbs and forefingers into small flat pieces, or "leaves." (Some pieces as big as a quarter are OK.) Add the buttermilk, as needed, and mix gently until just combined. The dough should be barely cohesive; don't worry if there are dry bits, because they will be incorporated as you pat and fold the dough.
Step 3: Lightly flour your work surface. Transfer the dough there, patting it into a 3/4-inch-thick rectangle. Fold the dough in thirds as you would a letter, bringing one-third in over the middle third, followed by the final third over the other two. Gently roll or pat the dough into another rectangle. Repeat this fold-and-roll process once more if the dough isn't cohesive or if you want to create more layers.
Lightly flour the top of the dough. Use the 2-inch cutter to create 10 to 12 rounds of dough, being careful to cut straight down and not twist the cutter (to ensure the biscuits get the best rise). You can reroll the dough once, though you might not get the same rise. Or use the bench scraper or a sharp chef's knife to square the sides and edges of the dough rectangle, then cut eight to 10 squares or rectangles. Place the biscuits on the baking sheet, spacing them about 2 inches apart.
Step 4: Bake (upper rack) for 16 to 18 minutes, rotating the pan from front to back after 14 minutes, until the biscuits are golden.
If you wish to brush the biscuit tops with melted butter, do so as soon as they come out of the oven. Serve warm, or at room temperature.
Drop Cream Biscuits10-11 servings
20 minutes
Recipe notes: The biscuits can be stored in zip-top bag at room temperature for up to 24 hours. Reheat them in a 300-degree oven for 10 minutes.
Ingredients
Steps
Step 1: Position a rack in the upper third of the oven; preheat to 450 degrees. Line a rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicone liner. Whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a mixing bowl.
Step 2: Microwave the cream in a microwave-safe container on HIGH for 60 to 90 seconds, until just warmed to body temperature (95 to 100 degrees), stirring halfway through. Stir the warm cream into the flour mixture to form a soft, uniform dough.
Grease a 1/3-cup dry measuring cup with cooking oil spray. Use it to drop 10 or 11 level scoops of batter 2 inches apart on the baking sheet; the biscuit portions should measure about 2 1/2 inches wide and 1 1/4 inches high. Regrease the measuring cup after every three or four scoops. If the portions are misshapen, use your fingertips to gently reshape the dough into level cylinders.
Step 4: Bake (upper rack) for 10 to 12 minutes, until the tops are light golden brown, rotating the pan from front to back halfway through.
Brush the hot biscuits with melted butter, if desired. Serve warm.
How To Make Perfect Biscuits, Plus 9 Recipes - Los Angeles Times
Really good biscuits are tender, lighter than air, and should be eaten straight out of the oven, while they're still warm. Whether you like your biscuits with a touch of tang from buttermilk, a little zing from ginger or made with cold milk, cream, shortening or lard, there are certain tips that can help you achieve the perfect biscuit every time
Here are some general tips to help elevate your biscuit game:
Keep your ingredients cold: Make sure all of the ingredients -- including flour and leavener -- are cold. Place your measured dry ingredients in the freezer 30 minutes or so before using. This helps to keep the ingredients from warming as the dough is worked, which could result in tough biscuits.
Don't overwork the dough: Mix the ingredients just until incorporated and the dough comes together. Overworking the dough will result in dense, tough biscuits.
Thickness counts: If you're craving high biscuits, roll the dough so that it's no less than about an inch thick before cutting.
Punch the dough, don't twist: Use your cutter to punch out the biscuits, careful not to twist the cutter. Twisting seals the layers and disrupts the rising of the biscuits.
Eat them right away: Biscuits don't have a long shelf life. Savor them while they're still warm.
Now that you've got the basics down, here are nine biscuit recipes to try.
Buttermilk biscuits and burnt orange honey butter
(Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)
One bite and you won't wonder why these biscuits were one of our top 10 recipes of the year in 2013. The recipe, from Govind Armstrong of Willie Jane, combines puffed, golden buttermilk biscuits with a side of sweetened honey butter flavored with caramelized orange juice.
Mangalitsa lard biscuits
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