Happy Monday, my Cornicopi-cats! :)  Today I was just going to share my basic recipe for buttermilk biscuits, but I figured you can’t have biscuits without sausage gravy. OK, so you can, you can have them plain, with butter, with jam, with honey, but once in a while you gotta get your sausage gravy on.  Is it a custom where you live to eat biscuits smothered in sausage or country gravy?  If not, you must try it, at least once.  This is straight up comfort food for me.

I make my biscuits two ways, depending on how much time I want to spend on them.  The first way includes a little bit of folding the dough over and then cutting into rounds. This yields a taller, layered biscuit.  The second way is just dropping the dough onto a baking sheet, then patting it into place with floured hands.  Either way, they are soft and so tender–some seriously good eatin’.

Basic Buttermilk Biscuits

Makes 8-10 biscuits
Printable recipe
Printable recipe with picture

1 ½ cups all-purpose flour
½ tablespoon baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
4 tablespoons cold unsalted butter
2 tablespoons vegetable shortening
¾ cup cold buttermilk

Preheat oven to 425 degrees and line a cookie sheet with parchment.

Measure the dry ingredients into a food processor or bowl and pulse once to combine. Pulse or cut in the butter and shortening until fats are the size of peas. Dump the contents into a bowl and stir in the buttermilk until dough is moistened.  You can pulse to combine in the food processor, but it is too easy to overwork the dough so I like to stir it in by hand.  At this point you can either 1) drop the dough in mounds the size of your choice onto prepared baking sheet. With floured hands, pat the tops and sides of the dough until they take on more of a shaped appearance.

Or 2) dump dough onto a floured surface and lightly flour the top.  Knead a few times (careful, don’t knead more than ten turns) and roll out to 1” thick.  Using a 2 ½” biscuit cutter or glass, cut out rounds going straight up and down without twisting the cutter, place on baking sheet, and brush tops with beaten egg if desired (this will make the tops golden but doesn’t change the flavor).  Bake for 10-12 minutes.  Serve warm with butter, jelly, or…

Suzie’s Sausage Gravy

Printable recipe
Printable recipe with picture

1 lb. good quality sausage roll, like Bob Evans
¼ cup all-purpose flour
2 cups milk
salt and black pepper to taste
Prepared biscuits

Crumble and cook sausage in large skillet over medium heat until browned. Stir in flour until dissolved. Gradually stir in milk. Cook gravy until thick and bubbly. Season with salt and pepper. Serve hot over biscuits. Refrigerate leftovers.