Buttermilk Biscuits - The Hillbilly Kitchen

When I was a little girl growing up in the north Georgia mountains, we all got up with the crowing of the rooster. For a long time we lived with my Granny and Paw because times were hard and jobs were scarce and on top of that, my daddy was spending his best working years recovering from a serious car wreck that almost left him crippled for the rest of his life.

I could hear the ritualistic clanking of pots and pans along with granny shuffling around the kitchen on her worn out linoleum floor while I laid in bed yawning and hoping she would change her mind about getting up so early and go back to bed.

The smell of smoke that soon filled my bedroom told me that Paw was throwing kindling in the pot bellied stove and that no one was going back to bed until nighttime rolled around again.

Granny was simultaneously building a fire in her kitchen wood stove and before too long, the rising heat from the two stoves would run me out of bed and send me flying downstairs towards cooler air.

The winter months brought snow by the foot instead of by the inch. Sometimes I dared to use Granny's spatula to scrape off some frost that had accumulated on the inside of the only window in the kitchen, so that I could peer out into the darkness, hoping to see a foot or more of freshly fallen snow that I could play in after breakfast.

Granny always made buttermilk biscuits for breakfast. Sometimes we didn't have bacon or sausage or even eggs to go with them, but buttermilk biscuits with Granny's real honey was enough of a treat by themselves.

I knew the biscuit making routine by heart and I could make her biscuits blindfolded because I helped her make them so many times.

First she mixed 2 cups of all purpose flour with 1 tablespoon of baking powder and 1/2 teaspoon of salt and she whisked them together.

Then she cut in 1/3 cup of her freshly churned butter.

She added 2 tablespoons of her fresh honey to 3/4 cup of her buttermilk. She gave it a little stir then poured it in the flour and butter mixture.

She threw a little flour down on her table so the dough didn't stick to the table and then she rolled out the dough and cut it into round biscuits about 1/2 inch high.

After sitting in the wood stove oven at 415 degrees Fahrenheit for 15 minutes, the biscuits had risen to a few inches high and they were golden brown.

Try my Granny's buttermilk biscuits. You'll want them every morning!