Why Most of America Is Terrible at Making Biscuits

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There’s a scientific reason no one outside the South can nail them.

Amanda Mull

For 25 years in Georgia, I watched my mom make the same batch of six light, fluffy biscuits for breakfast almost every Sunday. Then I moved to New York, never to see a light, fluffy biscuit again. I arrived in the city in 2011, just in time for southern food to get trendy outside its region, and for three years, I bit into a series of artisanal hockey pucks, all advertised on menus as authentic southern buttermilk biscuits.

With every dense, dry, flat, scone-adjacent clump of carbohydrates, I became more distressed. I didn’t even realize biscuits could be bad, given how abundant good ones were in the South. Even my mom, a reluctant-at-best cook, made them every week without batting an eyelash. The recipe she used had been on my dad’s side of the family for at least three generations.

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I asked my mom to email me the recipe, and it was three ingredients (self-rising flour, shortening, and buttermilk), mashed together with a fork. I’m not an accomplished baker, but I cook frequently, and this was the kind of recipe that had long been used by people without a lot of money, advanced kitchen tools, or fancy ingredients. Confident that I could pull it off, I marched right out and bought the ingredients. The result: biscuits that were just as terrible as all the other ones in New York. Not to be dramatic, but my failure destabilized my identity a little bit. What kind of southerner can’t make biscuits?

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The crux of this problem is a brand called White Lily, whose name and logo is familiar to virtually all southerners but foreign to most people outside the region. White Lily was founded in Knoxville, Tennessee, in 1883, and although other contemporary brands now make serviceable biscuit flour, it still dominates grocery baking aisles across the Southeast. Biscuits are now as common an inexpensive staple bread in southern diets as bagels or kaiser rolls are in New York, but for generations of rural, working-class southerners, they were a luxurious treat. “When my grandmother in western North Carolina said bread, she meant cornbread,” Phillips told me. “The biscuits were a special thing. We’d have them on Sundays.”

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https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2018/11/better-biscuits-south-thanksgiving/576526/

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Okay, I might bite the bullet and order a bag of White Lily flour. I've never made a decent biscuit in my life which has always bugged me. I'm not bragging, but friends and family have told me that I'm one of the best cooks they've ever met. I come by it honestly because both my mom & dad were the best cooks I'd ever met. However, my biscuits are these rock-hard disasters that even the local squirrels and raccoons scoff at. It's worth a try...

[Lochloosa]

1. It's the only flour in my house.

[rampartc]

2. soft red winter wheat is milled to make white lilly

and all great southern biscuits. it makes a difference.

[WheelWalker]

3. My daughter asserts that how you cut the biscuits is material to success.

Allegedly, one must press straight down, not twisting the cutting instrument. She uses a canning jar ring to effect the formation. We're in the PNW and the results have been most excellent IMO.

[Laelth]

4. Nice article. Thanks. n/t

-Laelth

[Midnightwalk]

5. Here's a link with reasons and alternatives

Googled out of curiosity. This link offers some reasons (lower in protein and gluten) and some alternatives.

[link:https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.southernkitchen.com/articles/eat/why-southerners-are-obsessed-with-white-lily-flour.amp|]

[hlthe2b]

6. I read this article some time ago & was surprised to see White Lily briefly available. Not now, tho

Still, you might double-check to see if that is the case where you live.

As a "low-carber" who constantly craves bread, I'm not sure I've ever had a "bad" biscuit, but surely some are better than others.

[frazzled]

7. Most of America doesn't make biscuits

My husband is from the South. So he loves biscuits and he loves grits (yuk!). I cook and bake extensively, but since those things are not my favorites by any means, I’ve rarely made them over these past 45 years. Yes, I bought White Lily flour once and made biscuits. They were ok. But the rest of the bag got thrown out, because that flour isn’t good for much else. I’ll stick to my King Arthur flour for general baking.

But to my original point: most of America doesn’t make biscuits.

[lark]

8. Biscuits are definitely not for low carb folks.

For just pure eating heaven though, there is nothing better than hot and fluffy biscuits with butter and honey. I rarely make them, staying away from white flour, but for an occasional indulgent treat - my oh my.

[abqtommy]

9. I'm on a low-carb diet or maybe I should call it an Inclusive Low-Carb Diet. I do pretty good

on it most of the time but I make room for the occasional biscuit or hot-fudge sundae. Hey, I'm too old
to die young so I might as well enjoy myself.

BTW my "official" diet includes unlimited use of natural oils and recommends using butter instead of margarine. Even without the biscuits and ice cream treats I'm not losing any weight and my A1C is
as good as can be.

[lark]

10. Good for you.

My A1C was elevated so I have definitely got to cut back on the carbs, especially sweets.