Entry tags:
Cooking
Six weeks ago (in a different world), we were scheduled to fly to Durham, NC for a weekend workshop on medieval music notation. We cancelled on the trip because we thought one or both of us might be sick, and there was enough concern about coronavirus in the U.S. that we thought a commercial airline trip might be inadvisable. ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
shalmestere had been looking forward to the trip, not only for the medieval music but because the Raleigh-Durham area has so many good barbecue joints and a regional chain called Biscuitville where we often get breakfast on the way to the day's playing session.
So I looked on the Web for Southern-style biscuits, and found this recipe. I went to the grocery (back when one did that without thinking about it or taking any special precautions) and picked up a bag of King Arthur self-rising flour, noting that it had a substantially lower protein content than their all-purpose flour, which is in turn lower than their bread flour, which is in turn lower than their whole-wheat flour. (My 7th-grade Home Ec teacher told us that the big flour companies sell different blends of flour in different parts of the country because a New England biscuit, say, requires a lot more gluten than a Southern biscuit.) And that recipe works very nicely: it calls for folding, rolling, and cutting in such a way that the layers are horizontal, so the resulting biscuit splits nicely along a horizontal fault line. (Another recipe from King Arthur calls for just rolling the dough into balls; we didn't like that one as well when we tried it a week or two later.)
This morning we decided to go all the way and make sausage gravy as well: brown the sausage, don't drain it but use the sausage fat in lieu of butter to form a flour roux, add milk, stir for 10-15 minutes until thick. Very tasty, if one is in the mood for south-of-the-Macy-Dixy.
Meanwhile, since we've been home a lot, we're eating more bread than usual. The loaf I made on Tuesday or Wednesday is almost gone, so yesterday afternoon I started a new batch. 24 hours later it's ready to be formed into a loaf, and we should have sourdough bread by bedtime.
shalmestere had been looking forward to the trip, not only for the medieval music but because the Raleigh-Durham area has so many good barbecue joints and a regional chain called Biscuitville where we often get breakfast on the way to the day's playing session.So I looked on the Web for Southern-style biscuits, and found this recipe. I went to the grocery (back when one did that without thinking about it or taking any special precautions) and picked up a bag of King Arthur self-rising flour, noting that it had a substantially lower protein content than their all-purpose flour, which is in turn lower than their bread flour, which is in turn lower than their whole-wheat flour. (My 7th-grade Home Ec teacher told us that the big flour companies sell different blends of flour in different parts of the country because a New England biscuit, say, requires a lot more gluten than a Southern biscuit.) And that recipe works very nicely: it calls for folding, rolling, and cutting in such a way that the layers are horizontal, so the resulting biscuit splits nicely along a horizontal fault line. (Another recipe from King Arthur calls for just rolling the dough into balls; we didn't like that one as well when we tried it a week or two later.)
This morning we decided to go all the way and make sausage gravy as well: brown the sausage, don't drain it but use the sausage fat in lieu of butter to form a flour roux, add milk, stir for 10-15 minutes until thick. Very tasty, if one is in the mood for south-of-the-Macy-Dixy.
Meanwhile, since we've been home a lot, we're eating more bread than usual. The loaf I made on Tuesday or Wednesday is almost gone, so yesterday afternoon I started a new batch. 24 hours later it's ready to be formed into a loaf, and we should have sourdough bread by bedtime.