The Many Failures & Final Success on My Path to Biscuit Perfection

Project 365, Day 122/365

Remember that time that I didn’t know what to write, so I asked Charles for a random word and he said “oboe” and then I proceeded to write the story of how I picked the instrument I played for seven years, which was, of course, the oboe? Well, we’re here again today.

“Give me a word…the first thing that comes to mind,” I just asked Charles.

“Biscuit.”

“Biscuit? Oh geez…okay.”

So my friends, today, I guess, I’m writing about biscuits. Or at least, something that comes to mind when I think of biscuits. I can take this a few different ways, but there’s only one way to end it: by sharing the only biscuit recipe I’ve been able to conquer, by the great Meghan Splawn. Full disclosure, she’s a past co-worker of mine. She’s so well known for her biscuit recipe that all you have to do is Google “Meghan Splawn” and the first suggested search term that comes up is “Meghan Splawn Biscuit.”

While I can’t remember the exact timeline, it was early on in our LA days that we ended up attending a biscuit seminar—yes, a biscuit seminar—with some friends in the basement of Grand Central Market, a food bazaar of sorts in Downtown Los Angeles. I was still a bit uncomfortable in my surroundings, like a stranger who doesn’t quite fit in to a party they weren’t invited to. Knowing we wouldn’t have much luck with parking in DTLA, we took a rideshare car across town that dropped us off right out front. As I looked across the street, I realized it was right by the Angels Flight Railway—a 118-year-old funicular that takes you up the side of Bunker Hill. I had only seen it in movies prior, specifically 500 Days of Summer, so I was already excited. You see, I tend to paint my picture of places by how they look in movies and TV shows, and Los Angeles is full of those moments. Of course, what I’ve come to learn is, nothing is ever quite what or how you think it is. We paid the few dollars it cost to board the little cart that would trek us up at a very steep incline to the upper level of downtown, but that came after the biscuit demo.

It wasn’t my first time in a funicular. On a previous trip to Quebec City, what my family and I call the most epic Christmas vacation we ever had or likely will ever have, we stumbled upon one. It was my first time ever seeing a funicular, and being nearly the only way on foot to get from one part of the city to the other, we rode it. There’s not much more to that story really, just a little aside I remember.

Back to biscuits.

The four of us—me, Charles, and two of our friends—found our way downstairs and grabbed some chairs to wait for the demo to begin. I recall my best friend from Florida texting me at the time, and I responded that I couldn’t chat because I was at a “biscuit demo.” As things often get lost in translation in quick, casual writing, her first response to me was “wtf is a biscuit.” I couldn’t understand what she didn’t understand about biscuits… “um…bread?” I think I shot back at her. She thought I was using some cool, shorthand lingo from “LA” to describe some sort of dance or party. Eh, no. To this day, “wtf is a biscuit” is a regular inside joke between me, Charles and the two friends we were there with. It was ridiculous, and clearly, you had to be there.

As the demo ensued, I watched industriously. I had never successfully made biscuits. They were either flat and didn’t rise, or dense like hockey pucks, so I put on my “Arlyn is a good A student” hat and started taking notes on my phone. “Use cold butter.” Okay got it. “Don’t overwork them.” 10-4. “Turn the dough over on itself no more than three times.” Great, will do.

I was so excited to get home and try my hand at some buttery, flaky, layered biscuits, and collected all the ingredients I didn’t already have the next time I was at the grocery store. I remember whipping up that first batch, following the instructions and the recipe I had jotted down from the biscuit seminar that day with the diligence of a teacher’s pet asked to hand out juice boxes and cookies at snack time. But I didn’t have the feel for it. I could tell. I didn’t know what I was feeling for, what things should look like. Don’t ask me how I lived in the “South” for 33 years of my life and had never nailed the feel in my hands of proper biscuit dough. But I hadn’t. Florida is not actually the “South,” so that’s my excuse.

Long story less long, those biscuits were a total bust. I don’t know what happened, but when I took them out of the oven, butter had oozed out of them all over the pan and they hadn’t risen. I had done exactly what the woman had said to do, and exactly what I thought she had done right before my very eyes. I had tasted her biscuits, and these weren’t that. My sweet Charles, trying to be supportive, threw me a very kind “they still taste good, though” when we ate them.

Something came to life within me after that failed biscuit attempt. I spent my weekends researching biscuit recipes, reading all the reviews, watching all the YouTube videos. There were some ventures that got a decent enough “C” grade, but nothing really ever crossed the threshold into “B” territory, let alone a solid “A.” And friends, I was after an A. I had spent plenty of time in Atlanta, in Charleston, in Savannah. These places…they know their biscuits. And nothing I did ever got me anywhere close to that.

Until I saw Meghan share her biscuit recipe.

Meghan, you see, had lived in Atlanta I believe, working for Alton Brown before she came to work for Kitchn, which was the food-focused sister site to Apartment Therapy where I worked for a few years. Alton Brown, of Good Eats fame, taught me like…50% of what I know about food science and cooking. So if anyone had a biscuit recipe I should try, it was Meghan.

The first thing she suggested that was different than other recipes was to freeze the butter. Then grate it into the flour. Everyone else had you dice it up and cut it into flour until it was pea-sized and well distributed. But by then, my warm grubby hands had already probably done me a disservice. The second thing that surprised me about Meghan’s process was to fold the dough in thirds…three times, effectively making nine layers. Every other recipe I followed previously had three or max four folds, so I was worried I would “overwork” it, but I decided to trust the process. If it was a bust, how different would it be from previous tries anyway, right? I find that not often enough…as in almost never, I allow myself to try and fail at something. I go into it with such high expectations for myself (yes, even recipes), and if it turns out to be a bust, I’m so upset. But…why? I can just try again next time, you know?

By the time I had finished working the dough, it felt springy and had miraculously come together. If you’ve ever worked with a dough like buttermilk biscuits, you know you have no faith in it when you turn it out of the bowl. “This?!? This crumbly mess is supposed to turn into biscuits? No way.” You itch to add more liquid, mentally insisting that it’s just too dry. Certainly you had missed something in the ingredient list or got the measurements wrong. But before you know it, you have something workable, something that looks vaguely as you think it should. This was that. Phew.

As I didn’t have a biscuit cutter at the time—I have since upgraded to a proper set of varying sizes—I grabbed a smallish glass I thought could be biscuit-sized, and started punching circles into my springy, beautiful dough speckled with creamy buttery splotches. These butter splotches, that’s where the magic happens, by the way. This, combined with you know…baking powder and whatnot…is what creates the lift and the layers in the oven.

Baking is magic. You mix together flour, butter, buttermilk, salt, baking powder, put some questionable-looking wet stuff into the oven with a hope and a prayer, and 20 minutes later, you have pillowy soft miraculous clouds to slather butter and jam or honey all over. WHAT?!? What a life we live.

And that’s exactly what happened when my timer went off. I had done that thing you see on shows like Great British Bake Off, where the bakers drop to their heels in front of the oven, staring into the little window with the light on willing beauty and, truly, sorcery to ensue. And it worked! After a handful of minutes, my efforts working dough on my tippy toes (I’m short, my counters are tall) paid off, and I finally, AT LONG LAST, had proper biscuits.

Meghan, you did it. I did it. Biscuit success!

Since that day, Meghan’s biscuit recipe has been my go-to. I’ve dared to look elsewhere, following the siren call of White Lily flour I’d have to order online (this is a type of flour that people from the South swear makes all the difference…I’ve only ever just used AP flour), but what’s the point of cheating on my perfect biscuit recipe when it’s never failed me?

So, that’s my biscuit story. At this point, I basically have it memorized. Biscuit dough is one of those things that people say you just need to “feel,” and I feel privileged and like an “insider” that my fingers finally have the memory they need to get it right. A southern right of passage? I like to make them extra large and turn them into breakfast sandwiches (Charles’ favorite move), but occasionally, I’ll keep them petite for spreads.

If you’ve been looking for a biscuit recipe, even if you didn’t actually know you were looking for a biscuit recipe, I highly recommend Meghan’s southern biscuit recipe from Kitchn. If you try them, let me know! I hope you love them as much as I do.

See you tomorrow, FOAS.