The biscuit also rises

Who knew that home made baking powder biscuits aren’t all the size and general consistency of a hockey puck?

Certainly not me.

Every attempt I’ve made to bake them has fallen flat, so to speak. But hope springs eternal…I made another pot of soup last night (Sunday’s was Chicken with Wild Rice, a cream based soup with wild rice, mushrooms and a little bit of onion; last night’s was Chicken with Rice, a broth based soup with white rice, lots of onion, carrot and celery, plus garlic, red pepper flakes and basil) and wanted some sort of bread to go with it. It’s much too cold to stop at the store just to grab a French bread; a final run at baking powder biscuits seemed in order.

This time, I pulled out the big gun: The Better Homes and Gardens cookbook, circa 1981. The recipe is called Biscuits Supreme, and, well, see for yourself:


Amazing. There are a few variations –garden (add finely chopped carrots, parsley and green onion), cornmeal (substitute 1/4 c of cornmeal for flour, add sage) and buttermilk (pretty obvious).

Visions of various uses of biscuits are swimming in my head. But the first and most obvious application – can anyone teach me how to make classic southern sausage gravy?