I may have to change the name of my blog to . . .

cooking and eating like Paula Dean!  Lord have mercy! 

I believe I have made the best biscuit I have ever!  Light, fluffy, nice crust.  I followed Cook’s Illustrated recipe to the T, except I wished I would have put the biscuits in my seasoned cast iron skillet for a better crust, but these were delicious!

Cook’s Illustrated Buttermilk Biscuits

• 2 cups flour
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 4 tablespoons butter (it called for cold, but I froze my butter and grated it before adding to the food processor)
• 1.5 cups buttermilk, cold

To form and finish biscutes

• 1 cup flour on a baking sheet
• 2 tablespoons butter, melted

Spray a 9 inch round cake pan with Pam.  Spray 1/4 cup dry measure cup with Pam.

In food processor, pulse flour, baking powder, sugar, salt and baking soda to combine – only about 6 one second pulses.  Scatter butter evenly over dry ingredients, and pulse 8 one second pulses, just until the butter becomes pebbly.  Transfer this mixture to a spearate bowl.   Add buttermilk and stir with rubber spatula until just incorporated – it will still be very wet and slightly lumpy.

Using the 1/4 dry measure, work quickly and scoop level amounts of dough into the flour on the baking sheet.  Dust the top of each biscuit with the foour and scoop and to shape the dough into a rough ball, shake off the excess flour and put in prepared cake pan.  Do this step quickly so that the butter doesn’t have a change to warm up.

Bake at 500 degrees for 5 minutes, reduce the temp to 450, then cook an additional 12-15 minutes.  Mine took about 14 minutes.

I cheated on the gravy – I’ve tried to make it before and it sucks.  My mom had put this in my Christmas box – so easy!

I cooked up 1/4 of this sausage while the biscuits cooked:

So continuing on with my Paula Dean themed meals, lunch is buttermilk soaked fried chicken on biscuits.   You’ll have to come back to see how good this is!!