Cooking At Ingredients: Southern Biscuits

There are a few foods that are taken very seriously here in The South. One of those foods is biscuits. Much love goes into our biscuits down here and often they are the star of the meal.

I had the delightful opportunity to take a biscuit class here in Clarksville at Ingredients. Even more fun… Himself was home and took the class too. He is the main baker in our family and will often whip up a batch of biscuits “just because”. And they are sooooo good!

Our instructor, Maryann Byrd, produced and wrote an Emmy winning PBS documentary “The Rise of the Southern Biscuits”.  She then wrote a book of the same name with recipes from the various interviews. 

Beaten biscuits- in the days when yeast and baking soda were hard to get, biscuit dough was folded – beaten out – and folded again over and over to work air into the dough.

Good ole Southern biscuits with country ham and…

… red-eye gravy for dipping.  Ummmmm…

My friend Winnie helped in the making of a skillet biscuit.

Ready to go in the oven.

Ready to go in the tummy! 

Then Maryann had the guys come up to try their hand at making a standard biscuit.  Each used a different wet ingredient and a different ‘oil’ ingredient.

Little did she know that she had a ‘ringer’ in the crowd.  Himself was soon turning out perfect biscuits!

Aren’t they purdy?


Miss Daisy’s Traditional Biscuits



1 cup all-purpose flour


2 teaspoons baking powder


¼ teaspoon salt


¼ teaspoon baking soda


2 ½ tablespoons vegetable shortening or butter


½ cup buttermilk


Preheat oven to 450*.


In a deep bowl sift dry ingredients; cut in shortening or butter. Add buttermilk all at once and stir into a ball of dough. Knead lightly. Roll out onto a floured board to a ½ inch thickness. Cut with biscuit cutter. Place on baking sheet and bake in a 450* oven for 10 to 12 minutes.


Yield: 12 biscuits