From Page to Plate: A Year with Martha
Day 4: Buttermilk Biscuits
Day Four of the Martha Stewart Baking Challenge brought me to Buttermilk Biscuits. What the heck. I’m guessing that picture is not even close to what they are supposed to look like. When I think of Buttermilk Biscuits, I think of KFC - and I’ve never gotten anything from KFC that looks like that, so I don’t know.
The first time I made them, I thought I’d be cheap and use the old sour milk trick. When I was younger, I had a hard time finding buttermilk at the local grocery store and when I could find it, it was usually out of my price range. Somewhere along the way, probably in Taste of Home (actually, now that I think about it, I’m almost sure that’s exactly where it was) magazine, I learned a quick substitute for buttermilk. You probably already know it, but if not, here you go: For every cup of buttermilk you need, you put a tablespoon of white vinegar in the bottom of a liquid measuring cup. Then add enough milk to make the mixture equal to the amount of buttermilk you needed. So, if you need one cup of buttermilk, you put a tablespoon of white vinegar in the measuring cup and then add enough milk to make it all equal one cup. (There was probably a much easier way to explain that.). Then, you stir it up and let it sit for about five minutes. You’ll have a soured milk and it will work to replace buttermilk - in most recipes. In recipes where you don’t need to taste the buttermilk, where you’re just looking for the texture that comes with using buttermilk, this works perfectly.
Yeah….this wasn’t that kind of recipe. They tasted like nothing. Absolutely nothing. It was so weird. You could feel the biscuit in your mouth, but it had no taste.
Total fail.
Obviously, it was because I was a cheapskate about the buttermilk….
So, I made them again and this time, I was sure to enlist help.
Absolutely a 10/10. Perfect. Way better than KFC (no offense, Colonel). I’m still not sure they are supposed to look like that, but they don’t stick around long enough for me to worry too much about how they look.
