Buttermilk isn’t usually on my grocery list. Has anyone tried a faux buttermilk using regular milk and an acid such as lemon juice or vinigar?
I use that all the time. I even have a powder you can simply add to your dry ingredients and substitute 90% volume of water for the buttermilk altogether. I don’t care much whether the buttermilk flavor is there or not, it’s usually necessary to rise using baking soda instead of baking powder.
Use baking soda and an acid instead of baking powder if you have an irrational fear of aluminum, the third most abundant element on earth.
To be completely accurate, it’s aluminum sulfate. I would suspect that it’s used to prevent clumping or some such. It’s nothing to be afraid of, but it can affect the taste and leave a metallic aftertaste, although if you’re going to heap gravy on the biscuits I would think it’s a non-issue.
Also, baking powder is made with baking soda and isn’t really necessary to add more for buttermilk biscuits.
Ahem!
Biscuits should be made with buttermilk.
My grandmother’s recipe called for only buttermilk, shortening, baking power and flour. And they were heavenly. In a pinch, she would add a small amount vinegar to regular milk instead of buttermilk.
Buttermilk gives that classic tang that biscuit lovers look for. You can get the same effect from yogurt.
Cutting in butter is super annoying; I like the effort/results ratio of this recipe:
7.125oz all purpose flour (1.75 cups)
1.375oz corn starch (0.25 cups) - makes it lighter/softer. If you have a pastry flour or something with less protein than all purpose, you can just do 2c/8.5oz of it.
1 tablespoon baking powder
2 teaspoons sugar
1 to 1 1/4 cups heavy cream, enough to make a cohesive dough
1 to 2 tablespoons melted butter
Stir together the dry ingredients, then slowly add the cream (Easiest done with a food processor or stand mixer, but you can add/stir/add/stir manually or have a second person drizzle while you stir.) until it comes together into dough.
Do the flatten and cut thing (You can get somewhat flakier biscuits by folding the dough over a few times before flattening and cutting), and dip each biscuit into the melted butter before baking about 15 minutes in a 425 degree oven.
Super lazy, but the results are excellent.
If all you have is strong flour, just use a little less than the recipe calls for, and mix just enough to get the dough even. Say, instead of two cups use 1-3/4 cups flour. Can you get lemon juice? Or vinegar? Use one tablespoon(15 mls) of either, and 15 tablespoons(220 mls) of milk, to make one cup of buttermilk substitute.
For the oven temp, just use a middle of the road setting, not “warm” and not the opposite end “broil” . Since you have just one setting, experiment with one biscuit and see what happens.
I bet there was some salt, too, unless she was adding extra baking soda to self-rising flour. Otherwise, it’s identical to my mother’s recipe. Heaven on a plate. (And mine aren’t nearly as good. I use identical ingredients, but I don’t have the touch. Otherwise, my baking is wonderful, but biscuits are my nemesis, the white whale that torments me, the Holy of Holies denied me. Until my children wax nostalgic about my biscuits, I’m a failure as a Southern mama.)
Grandma was a little vague on some details, including amounts. Which is why I could never get mine to come out as good as hers.
“You need a* touch* of this and a smidgeon of that…”
The classic Southern biscuit recipe in the book I mentioned above says: “add a handful of lard”. People who made them daily for their families likely measured by eye and feel.
All this aside, I just ordered a 5-pound bag of White Lily soft winter wheat flour.
Yep, identical to Mom’s recipe. And you ordered the right flour. 
It occurred to me that people back in the day used wood-burning stoves. On cattle drives and the like, they didn’t even have those. Biscuits were made in cast iron pans or Dutch ovens, in the fire’s embers. If you can find a heavy duty pot with a lid, you could probably do the same with a bit of practice.
I was never able to duplicate the real Southern-Style biscuits that have a great crust and a cake-like center and are just made for spooning on home-made jam from a ceramic jar. There is a great Cajun breakfast place in Boulder (Lucille’s) who does them right and when I asked they said they used Paul Prudohmme’s recipe.
It’s from his original book Louisiana Kitchen and can be found online.
It’s a simple recipe and can be whipped up in minutes. I think the keys are using cold milk, minimal mixing, and also just going with it when it looks more like a batter than a dough. This isn’t something you roll out on the counter and cut out with a cup. It’s more liquid than solid.
Sodium aluminum sulfate is common ingredient in double-acting baking powders. Unlike cream of tartar, it only reacts with the baking soda at high temperatures; so if you’re a bit slow getting your batter into the oven & a lot of the bubbles escape, it’s OK, because as the batter heats in the oven the other reaction will kick in and make more. Hence, ‘double-acting’.