Nathalie Dupree - Southern Biscuits

Southern Biscuits

Nathalie Dupree and Cynthia Graubart

Photographs by Rick McKee

Southern Biscuits

Digital Edition v1.0

Text 2011 Nathalie Dupree and Cynthia Graubart

Photographs 2011 Rick McKee

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any means whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except brief portions quoted for purpose of review.

Gibbs Smith, Publisher

PO Box 667

Layton, UT 84041

Orders: 1.800.835.4993

www.gibbs-smith.com

ISBN: 978-1-4236-2177-5

To the Dupree-Bass Family and the Graubart Family and with thanks to all our biscuit-making friends who helped so much. Nathalie and Cynthia

Where to start with our acknowledgements? First, of course, our families, which are a bit intertwined as Cynthia was my producer for New Southern Cooking when she was a young woman. I introduced her to her husband, Cliff Graubart, stood up for her at her wedding in Rome, and have watched her beautiful wise children, Rachel and Norman, grow up. Cliff was the first friend of mine to meet my husband, Jack Bass, a minute after I did. He thought we were already an item. Our families have put up with our traveling back and forth between Atlanta and Charleston to work together, hours on the computer, dozenshundredsthousands of biscuits coming out of the oven and going into various concoctions, some successful, some not, which they dutifully ate. Rachel Graubart and my husband Jack Bass granddaughter, who I claim too, and Rachel Bass tested recipes for us. Norman Graubart, a literalist, tested recipes for us and brought us new insights to our detailed recipe instructions.

The most important person after our families is Deidre Schipanni. Deidrea multifaceted person with many years of training in science and other degrees she holds, professional cooking, writing, testing recipes, and writinghelped me for several years, including some of the science information for biscuits. We are truly grateful for her wisdom and many hours of effort on our behalf.

Thank you to our wonderful photographer, Rick McKee, and all the others who worked on this book. There were many interns, paid assistants, and many students who have studied with me, who worked one by one on this bookwe are grateful for them all. Book projects can take years and be touched by so many helping hands, but we are especially appreciative in this last year for the efforts of Hayley Daen, Nikki Moore, Erin Ragoon, Julia Regner, and Erin Simpson, who were dedicated, creative, and hard working, adding so much to our efforts.

Our daily work and organizational tasks for this book were made far easier by the detailed and dedicated Beth Price. Her diligence and dogged determination kept us on task. Her invention and management of our recipe-testing system proved invaluable. All of these recipes work, and we have Beth and her online recipe-tester recruits to thank for it.

Other resources are numerous as well. They include cookbook author Damon Fowler, who came to stay in Charleston one time when we were buried in biscuits and talked to us more about some of his favorites from his own books, as well as things he has learned in his scholarly research over the years. Shirley Corriher and Kate Almand, who are a bit entwined as well, have been my source of information and techniques since the 1970s. Other friends have given us their recipes over the years, and we have tried to credit them as well.

Mrs. S. R. Dull, whose book Southern Cooking I have studied and cooked from for the same forty years, and Irma Rombauers Joy of Cooking , which has been with me even longer, are two of our most important teachers. Their names and books are in the bibliography section along with many others. I have collected many recipes, books, and pamphlets from White Lily flour over the years and have learned from them equally. They were our public television underwriter when Cynthia and I worked together on New Southern Cooking and brought us into the world of soft-wheat flour. They became our sponsor because they said I was the first person to put in writing, in an article in Browns Guide to Georgia, what made their flour different. Although management has changed, the flour has not, and we have tested the recipes in this book with it as well as with other flours.

Nathalie Dupree, December 2010

My mother baked biscuits three times a day. No one on Earth made them better. Of course, feeding a dozen children and an appreciative and hungry farmer-husband gave her an edge in the practice. After her death, my father eventually resorted to canned biscuits, declaring them only passably eatable, yet I could always hear the unsaid end of the sentence,... but not half as good as your mama could make them.

When writing To Dance with the White Dog , I remembered the occasion that my father decided to bake biscuits and how comically tragic the experiment became. It inspired what I have always called the biscuit-cooking scene in the bookmy favorite scene from all the stories Ive written and the only scene I really enjoy reading aloud.

Following is that scene. I am overjoyed with presenting it again in this extraordinary cookbook celebrating the true soul food of mankindthe biscuit. My mother would have rejoiced in what my friends Nathalie Dupree and Cynthia Graubart have created. Of course, at the mixing bowl she would have kept to her own recipe, and, for me, that is the only thing missing from Southern Biscuits . Still, having that recipe wouldnt have mattered. Only my mother could do it the way it ought to be doneher way.

Kate called before sundown and, minutes later, Carrie called. Both wanted to know if he would have dinner with them. He refused both offers, telling them he was not hungry, but he was, and he decided he would bake fresh biscuits and have biscuits and molasses.

It would not be hard to bake biscuits, he thought. He had sat at the kitchen table hundreds of times and watched her at the cabinet, her hands flashing over the dough, and it did not seem a hard thing to do. He knew the ingredients she used.

He stood at the cabinet and took the wood mixing bowl and scooped three cups of flour from the flour bin, and then he measured out two teaspoons of baking powder and a teaspoon of baking soda and a teaspoon of salt and he mixed it together with his hands. Then he took up a palmful of shortening from the can and dropped it into the middle of the flour mixture, but it did not seem enough and he added another palmful and he began to knead the shortening and flour mixture together, but it was greasy and stuck to his hands.

The dog watched him from the doorway leading into the middle room. Dont think I know what Im doing, do you? he said to the dog. Think I forgot about the buttermilk, dont you? He had forgotten, and talking to the dog reminded him. He pulled across the room on his walker and took the buttermilk from the refrigerator and returned to the cabinet and began to pour the milk over the wad of dough. Ought to be enough, he judged aloud. Cant be that hard to make biscuits. He kneaded the buttermilk into the shortening-and-flour mixture and the dough became like glue, sticking to his fingers. Need some more flour, he said profoundly to the dog. The dog tilted her head curiously.