Where It All Began.....

 Welcome to my blog! I think today is a good day to eat, how about you???

I will start off with a tutorial of the first food I ever made. 

Homemade Biscuits!

 When I was around 3-4 years old my mom would make biscuits almost every day for our family. 

I thought this was the coolest thing to do, ever!

She would let me sit on her lap at the kitchen table where she made them and cut them out for her, then I advanced to cutting and placing them on the pan.

 Before long she had me making them all the way to having them ready to go in oven.
By age 7 or 8 I made them all for the family.

 If one is going to make biscuits they MUST have cool tools that have been tried and true such as this vintage flour sifter. Would you guys believe I have a friend that I was yardsaling with one day and she did not know what a sifter was??? I still love her!!!

Also you must have the perfect biscuit bowl such as this Pyrex mixing bowl.

 And the perfect biscuit pan!!! How sweet is this cast iron pan???

I have to fess up that I have only owned this biscuit pan for maybe 5 years. Any old well seasoned baking will do, just not as much fun to use!

 I have lightened up the recipe a little over the years and now use regular whole milk instead of buttermilk like my mom used.

I have to admit that my biscuits are made totally from scratch without a recipe, however, I have made a recipe for them just so I can share with you guys.

How can you understand a dab of this and that over the internet???

So....start with 2 1/2 Cups of Big Spring Mill Self Rising Flour *

6 Tablespoons Butter, very cold

1 Cup Whole or 2% Milk

1-2 teaspoons White Vinegar (optional)

a little more flour for "working" the dough

Sift Flour into a pretty Pyrex Mixing Bowl (just because)

Add vinegar to the cup of milk, if a buttermilk biscuit tang is desired, or use 1 Cup of Buttermilk

cut the cold butter into the flour using a pastry cutter or two butter/case knives until it sorta resembles peas......only not green...lol.....also need to still see chunks of yellow butter, this is what gives you a flaky biscuit! 

Add the milk slowly mixing with a fork.....I use the meat fork that came with my set of stainless, perfect size.

Incorporate as much milk as you can, until the dough is sticky/wet, you can and will add more flour. If the stars are not lined up properly the one cup of milk will make the dough soupy, should only be sticky/wet, tho.

Sift extra self rising flour ( 3/4 Cup-ish) out on your counter, table or dough cloth as you see here.....I suggest you have one of these, cleanups are so easy!!

Plop your sticky dough out into the middle of your flour on your cloth.

Start gently incorporating some of the flour around the dough glob as if to coat the outside.

Continue rolling dough over until its no longer sticky. DO NOT OVERWORK your dough! 

When your dough ball looks like mine above stop.

Use a rolling pin and gently roll dough out to about 1/2" thickness.

I am showing two of my cutters that I use equally as often. One is an old baking powder can with a couple air holes poked in the bottom. This is approx 2" and the other is an old biscuit cutter that I have had for many years and it's approx 2 1/2" Of course I only make one size at a time except for this tutorial!

I told you I do not usually use a recipe with real measurements and I guesstimate as to how many biscuits I want/need. Today I sorta doubled the recipe and had lots of biscuits of various sizes.

I even made out a "hoecake"!

Can you tell I love to cook in cast iron??

My husband made this cool rolling pin out of wormy red oak!

I love the things he has turned out on a lathe over the years.

Bake in 400 degree preheated oven for approx 20-30 minutes until browned.

Biscuits must be served with butter and my Homemade Black Raspberry Jam!

I have to say that when I actually made out the recipe/measurements to share my biscuits came out PERFECT!!!!! Even better than my guessing all these years! So very flaky!!!

I am happy to share this recipe with you and feel certain your biscuits will be just as good!!

Homemade Biscuits

makes approx 12 - 2 1/2" biscuits

2 1/2 Cups Self rising Flour

1 Cup Milk

1-2 teaspoons white vinegar

6 Tablespoons Butter, very cold

Extra self rising flour

*As I mentioned above I ONLY use Big Spring Mill Self Rising Flour that comes from a mill about an hour away from me here in SW Virginia. 

I feel sure you can find a flour that is close to as good as this!!!

Now for a variation:

I have had a request for a recipe using lard instead of butter.

I used to only make these with lard when we killed hogs and had access to home rendered lard.

Just use 2/3 Cup cold lard in place of the Butter in the above recipe.

Enjoy!!!

Follow me on Facebook and let me know how your biscuits turn out!!!

It's a Good Day To Eat!

God Bless You All,

Becky