{Book Review} Southern Biscuits

The English have scones, which have had a bit of a revival the last few years, now the Americans are back in the game with an entire book dedicated to the humble biscuit.The Southern style biscuit that we’re familiar with today have their roots in the 1800’s once baking powder had been developed for leavening.

A biscuit can be eaten for any meal of the day unlike the scone, which is usually only eaten at tea time. Southern Biscuits contains a forward explaining about biscuits for those that may not be familiar with them. The introduction of the book extensively covers flour and fat, which are the main components of the biscuits. This part is important to work on your biscuit technique.

The other chapters in the book include

Easy Biscuits - no fuss recipes that require only a few ingredients

Traditional Biscuits - classic biscuits that contain an added fat

Embellished Biscuits - dressed up biscuits

Biscuit Relatives - variations built on basic biscuit ingredients

Tomorrow’s Biscuits - put yesterday’s biscuits to good use

Gilding the Lily - a butter or spread for any biscuit

Desserts - biscuits put to use for dessert

I love this book I was totally blown away about the different types of biscuits and how the different variations produce different textures and tastes.

There are so many recipes that there is a biscuit to match almost any meal that you’re planning. I made biscuits for breakfast and also biscuit muffins to go along with a spaghetti dinner. I spent ages going through all the pages trying to decide which ones to make. I see myself using this book fairly often since I love a good dinner biscuit and hate the fuss of making yeast rolls.

Thanks to Gibbs Smith for my copy

You Might Like: