Mana's Flakey Buttermilk Biscuits (adapted by Cheryl)

A real proper Southern biscuit has a slightly crisp shell and the insides are as soft as an old pillow. That's just common knowledge down home and if you've ever eaten a true Southern biscuit, you'll know the difference. Warm biscuits slathered with butter and your favorite jam or honey are always a hit. I grew up also eating them with molasses or dark Karo syrup. Or maybe split and covered with hot sausage gravy. You can also add 2 cups of shredded cheddar and 2 t. garlic powder for great cheesy biscuits. They are good the morning splitting them, spread on butter, and toast in a toaster oven.

There are some "tricks" I'll share to getting the perfect biscuit. They might sound trivial but trust me they make all the difference in the world. I'll just put those first so you are thinking about it when you start preparation. If you make them a lot, and I'm betting once your family gets a taste they'll be asking for them regularly, this will become second nature and you won't have to read them every time. I could make biscuits in my sleep I've done it so much. So first a little biscuit education!

* One of the unshakeable tenets of Southern cooking is that Southern-style baking requires soft winter wheat flour - the kind with less protein. If you can get your hands on it, use White Lily Flour which has the least protein and less gluten. It makes biscuits and lighter and fluffier. Trouble is, the demarcation line going west for availability of this largely Southern brand, is somewhere around Oklahoma. You won't find it in California, but thankfully you can now buy it online from Smuckers since they bought out White Lily (http://bit.ly/2EyHv2K). What price perfection?! 
Another acceptable flour is King Arthur (use the self-rising kind), but be warned, you just will not get the same perfect result. Here's a comparison of the same recipe and same technique but with two different flours. You can plainly see White Lily is the ruling queen for biscuits, cobbler, scones, cookies, or shortcake. The White Lily biscuits rose a full 1/2" higher than did the King Arthur, the shell crisped better, and most importantly, the innards were as soft as your grannies yellow cake. The King Arthur biscuit was also slightly tough. 

You might be thinking around this point, flour is flour so who cares! You can still make your biscuits with any all-purpose flour, but I'm telling you right now they won't rise properly. They can turn out crumbly, or worse still - tough. Sometimes they will be gluten-y, and none of they were ever ever be soft enough inside to past muster on a Southern table.  Okay, enough about that!


* Make sure you use real salted butter and that it is SUPER cold (I usually take mine out of the freezer and cut it with a sharp knife into small cubes.)


* Don't use a dull edged drinking glass to cut your dough. You need a sharp biscuit cutter. The technique matters. Do NOT twist it at the end because it seals the edges of the dough and keeps the biscuits from rising. Dip the cutter in flour when needed to keep it from sticking to the dough. Bet you didn't know that!


*When you put the biscuits on a cookie sheet, or in an iron skillet, they MUST be slightly touching and not spaced wide apart. If you cook them in a cast iron skillet, you want just a tad of grease on the bottom - not a lot, a faint sheen. If I cook bacon or sausage in the pan I'll pour off the grease then lightly wipe the pan with a paper towel leaving a smidgen in the bottom. Also your pan and your grease should be cool.

Preheat oven to 425° F. 

Buttermilk Biscuits Ingredients

2 cups White Lilly Flour (or King Arthur self-rising in which case all you add is extra baking powder and the baking soda)
1Tb. baking powder (yes - tablespoon!)
1 tsp salt
1 stick butter (salted or unsalted) (VERY cold): a good method is to cut up a cold stick into little cubes and then put it in the freezer for about 5 minutes.
Whisk together the buttermilk and honey:  
3/4 - 1 cup-ish VERY COLD buttermilk (use enough until the dough is just barely wet enough)
2 T. Honey (this can be omitted if you don't have it)
In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. (If you are using self-rising flour, add 3 t. baking powder and 1/2 t. baking soda and use a whisk to mix the dry ingredients well before adding the butter.)

Take the butter cubes from freezer and and cut them in with a hand pastry cutter (or pulse a few times in a food processor). You want the butter pieces no bigger than peas – the mixture should resemble coarse meal. Work fast because you don't want the cold butter to warm. Here's why: Part of what makes biscuits rise and be so tall and fluffy is the cold butter hitting the heat of the oven and creating steam. The steam pushes the biscuits up, up, up! If you want, you can stick the bowl of flour and butter into the frig to chill for 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, whisk together the buttermilk and honey in a measuring cup. Add to the bowl with the butter/flour mixture and stir gently just until the dry ingredients are moistened.

Turn the dough onto a lightly floured work surface and knead gently about 3-4 times to bring it together (easy does it). You'll sprinkle on small amounts of flour as you go to reduce stickiness and wetness, and also sprinkled on your rolling surface. The dough may still be a little crumbly, that’s fine. Roll or pat the dough into a 9×5-inch rectangle about 1/2-inch thick. Fold the dough into thirds like a business letter (using the long sides of the rectangle). Once again, roll the dough into a 9×5-inch rectangle about 1/2-inch thick, and again fold it into thirds like a letter. Roll the dough out to 3/4" thickness (the shape doesn’t really matter). Using a sharp biscuit cutter, cut biscuits from the dough (IMPORTANT! Don’t twist the cutter, use a straight up and straight down motion) and transfer to the prepared baking sheet. Gather the scraps and cut more biscuits once or twice to get as many as possible.) The last thing before putting these in the oven is to make a fist and you one knuckles to push down on each biscuit making an indention. Why you might well ask!  Because, believe it or not - they will rise better!

Bake in preheated oven for 11-14 minutes, or until the biscuits have risen and are golden brown on top. Optionally brush the tops with a mixture of melted butter and honey and serve warm.