[Sca-cooks] angel biscuits

[Wanda Pease]

I think Johanna has hit on the answer as to why regional breads don't seem
to translate from area to area.  I recently got the book _Cookwise by
Shirley O. Corriher, a food writer and "culinary sleuth" who specializes in
finding the scientific reasons Why things work as they do in food prep.  The
book has recipes, some from very famous chefs, some from people like my
grandmother (when she had anything to cook.  The Farm Depression hit long
before Wall Street fell).

At any rate she talks about 10 different flours:  Cake (Swans Down,
Softasilk) for cakes, quick breads, muffins, pancakes; Instant flours
(Shake&Blend, Wondra)for Sauce and gravy, blending to lower protein content;
Bleached Southern all-purpose (White Lily, Martha White, Gladiola, Red Band)
for Pie crusts, biscuits, quick breads, muffins; National brand self-rising
(Gold Medal, Pillsbury) Biscuits, quick breads, muffing; National brand
bleached all-purpose (Gold Medal, Pillsbury)	A little too much protein for
best pie crusts, quick breads, muffing, or pancakes; too little protein to
make outstanding yeast breads; National brand un-bleached all-purpose (Gold
Medal, Pillsbury) Yeast Breads, cream puffs;  Northern all-purpose (Robin
Hood, Hecker's) for yeast breads, cream puffs, puff pastry; Northern
unbleached all-purpose (King Arthur) for Yeast breads, cream puffs, puff
pastry, pasta, pizza; Bread flour for Yeast breads, pasta, pizza; and Durum
Wheat (semolina) for Pasta.

She lists the different amount of protein each type has in it.  The Cake
Flours have the least and produce lighter things like muffins and pancakes,
the higher like Durum with 13+ grams/cup produce things like pasta dough.

Your grandfather probably used a cake flour, or at least one that was
produced from soft wheat and that allowed his biscuits to rise more.  If
your family moved north where the grains grown tended to be more the hard
wheat variety that soft rise would have been reduced, and nothing would have
tasted the same.  Besides, it used to be a common joke that the wife could
never make biscuits as light as mom!  Luckily for my brothers wives my
mother was a Pharmacist who cooked because she had to, not because she
enjoyed it.

Regina


I am under the opinion that the flours are the main
key to why the old biscuit recipes never work out these
days... or maybe it's memories. I'll save your
query and see what I can locate in my American stuff.

Johnna Holloway

BaronessaIlaria at aol.com wrote:
>
> What I want is a good recipe for "angel" biscuits. My grandfather in
Kentucky
> apparently could make them better than anyone in the world, but he died
> before I was born and if he ever passed the recipe on to my mother (his
> daughter-in-law), she wasn't able to duplicate them and gave up.
> Unfortunately that side of the family is mostly gone now....
>
> Ilaria