
When I was first married and still trapped in the idea of being "the perfect wife", not that I was ever perfect, just that I tried to be what I thought would make Gene think I was the perfect wife... boy, was there ever a more loaded psychological statement than that one? Yes, I know. I'm still not perfect but I do, at least, realize with 23 years hindsight that Gene loved me for who I was, and am, not because of some baggage in my head. Anyway, back then one of my goals was to make a gorgeous, perfect, from-scratch meal every single night including homemade bread. I did it most nights but it required hours of planning in advance and a couple of hours in the kitchen every day. And that was just for dinner!
While I loved, and still love, to cook real life came crashing in and I soon realized that even though real food, from-scratch cooking, is always the ideal, to accomplish that even for a majority of time requires a few kitchen hacks. Back then I had two for bread: the bread machine and the angel biscuit.
The beauty of angel biscuits is that you can make a huge batch and just pull off what you need for dinner, roll them out, let them rise for 20 minutes to come to room temp and bake them off. Using both the leavening action of traditional bread: yeast, and that of the biscuit: baking powder, plus baking soda and buttermilk.
Baking soda is activated by acid which is why most biscuit recipes call for buttermilk. A kitchen hack I learned in my Mom's kitchen is to use "sour milk" when buttermilk isn't available. You simple add 1 Tbsp of vinegar or lemon juice to each cup of regular or what my Nannie (Grandma) would have called "sweet milk". You simply mix the two together and let stand for a couple of minutes until it thickens and curdles: buttermilk!
The one real drawback to angel biscuits that we didn't know about 23 years ago is shortening. My Mom was a cake decorator, back in the dinosaur days of no other option but Crisco and powdered sugar frostings, so we had huge, multiple cans of shortening at our house. I have a confession. Even though I know shortening is a heart attack waiting to happen, we all know the evils of trans-fat, I think I actually drooled on myself a little in the theater when we went to see The Help and Minnie fried that lovely chicken in that big cast iron skillet full of Crisco. Yes, ignorance was indeed bliss. I miss that shortening fried chicken!
But I wasn't willing to completely write off the angel biscuits. You can make traditional biscuits with butter instead of shortening, they're just a little more finicky, a little more crumbly if you're trying to knead and roll them out by hand. But with angel biscuits I don't have any problems at all. I cut the butter in by hand (and use half the amount of it than called for in most biscuit recipes) and then put the dough together in the mixer, using a two bowl method, wet and dry, and it comes together quickly and beautifully. The texture that bakes out is tender, with a crumb exactly midway between a biscuit and a dinner roll. Perfect for any meal but very convenient for work night dinners. (Great with sausage gravy for breakfast too!)