A biscuit, a tasket

Nothing says come and get it like a plate of freshly made buttery biscuits.

I should know. When I was in the 5th Grade, my mother asked me what I had learned in school, and all I could recall was the day's lesson in home ec class: the art of biscuit-making. Mother was delighted and promptly assigned me to make the house biscuits every Sunday. I got the look and feel from an early age and kept up the weekly chore. Mother was insistent that I press on, telling me, "If you can make a good biscuit, you can keep a husband." Or was it "you can get a husband"? It works either way.

I've seen good versions come and go across the years - biscuits topped with grated cheese, jalapeno biscuits, biscuits slathered with bacon grease, "angel biscuits" made with yeast, and our household favorite, buttermilk biscuits. Jeanne even had me make a version for Better Homes & Gardens years ago, topped with grated red beets. They were gorgeous in the presentation.

As good as I thought my homemade biscuits were, they pale in comparison with what we rolled out in the College of Hearts and Sciences.

I watched Chef ever so carefully, making note of what he did differently from the usual course of action, and broke a few ingrained habits to do things his way, including shoving the dough into the fridge so it takes a chill.

Et voila! The biscuits were impressively stacked, richly golden and Texas-sized. I couldn't wait to get them home for everyone to try - and to my astonishment - try them they did, for there was only one half piece to be found this morning. Somewhere in the night, people had feasted with reckless abandon.

Some of the differences:
using a mix of pastry and bread flour
adding sugar
using only very cold butter
using milk (I suspect it was not 2%)
chilling the dough at least half an hour
rolling out to one-half inch, and using a wide cutter
brushing with a beaten yolk to brown the top

The actual recipe belongs to the textbook Professional Baking by Wayne Gisslen so you understand, I can't reprint the biscuit recipe here without permission. Just go hands on and do what I did as a young girl, work it, work it, work it.