The pleasures of farm-to-table shopping continue to increase for us in Maine. From local produce, meats and dairy, it’s a veritable cornucopia of selection as we shop farmers’ markets and local stores that stock farm food. My latest quest is “real” buttermilk.
Buttermilk biscuits
We have very good cultured buttermilk mostly made from skimmed milk to which cultures are added. It becomes tangy, sour and thick. But this is not the buttermilk made by 19th century farmers. And I became increasingly curious about this real stuff as I came across recipes—mostly in the books of southern cookbook authors—who refer to the ingredient as “full-fat” buttermilk.
I thought we had it aplenty from farms like Balfour and Smiling Hill. These are fine milks. But they’re not full fat.
Full-fat buttermilk is made from either raw or pasteurized cream that’s churned into butter, leaving behind liquid—the milk–from the butter. This liquid will have flecks of butter in it–thus known as full-fat buttermilk. And what further defines full-fat buttermilk is that it’s made from whole cream rather than skimmed milk.
High View Farm’s old-fashioned buttermilk
What further spurred my quest for real buttermilk was seeing a recipe in Garden and Gun Magazine— the publication that chronicles life in the south—in which biscuits were made with self-rising flour and full-fat buttermilk; there wasn’t a trace of fat such as butter or lard in the biscuit dough.
How was this possible? The article called it the best and easiest biscuits.
When I go to the smaller farmer’s markets around Maine, I’ll encounter farmers who bring their “real” buttermilk to market. It usually sells out fast. One such market is the Harrison Farmers Market where High View Farm sells and is known for the purity of their dairy products: raw milk, cream, butter and buttermilk. It’s run by Bill and Darcy Wilson whose farm has been in the Wilson family since the early 1800s.
High-View’s churned raw butter
Darcy explained the process of how she makes buttermilk. The milk from their herd of Jersey cows has the highest butterfat content. Straight from milking the cow, the milk is stored in steel containers and the cream rises to the top. This is skimmed off and put into the butter churner. The liquid that’s left over with flecks of butter in it is the buttermilk. This also results in yielding an intensely yellow butter, with a very high butterfat content.
I’ve bought all of their milk products: raw milk so thick and yellow; raw cream, very rich and pure buttermilk and the churned butter from unpasteurized cream. The buttermilk is in glass bottles, and the butter rises to the top so when you first use the buttermilk there’s a thick scrim of butter covering the milk. Shake the bottle well and the butter flecks are blended into the milk.
When I made the biscuits using this buttermilk it produced a rich dough that was incomparable to other biscuits I’ve made. One of the secrets to great biscuits is to use southern soft wheat flour. This is not easily found here but can be mail ordered from White Lily or Southern Biscuit.
In the GG article the recipe came from Sharon Benton whose husband owns the renowned Benton’s Smoky Mountain Country Hams in Madisonville, Tennessee. Fine restaurants across the country cherish their smoked products like bacon and ham.
The flour she used was a product called Our Best Self-Rising Flour from Booneville Flour and Feed Mill in Booneville, NC. I ordered it. It produced one of the finest biscuits ever. Made from southern soft-wheat flour it’s as smooth and fine as crushed velvet. King Arthur Flour makes a fine self-rising flour made from the southern wheat. I prefer the small-batch product from Our Best. It’s easily ordered by calling the mill.
Small batch flour from Booneville Mill and Feed
I served these biscuits at my Memorial Day Barbecue dinner, which included glazed, smoked ribs, slaw, potato salad, crunchy bacon cornbread, biscuits and rhubarb cream pie.
MD dinner with ribs, slaw potato salad, biscuits and rhubarb cream pie, the dough made with High-View butter
This is my adaptation of the biscuits made by Sharon Benton in the article that appeared in Garden and Gun Magazine. For the buttermilk Swallowtail or Kate’s cultured full-fat buttermilk are a decent substitute, approximating “real” buttermilk. The best, however, is High View’s raw buttermilk made from churned raw cream. No cultures are added.
Ingredients
- 3 cups self-rising flour (preferably White Lily, Southern Biscuit or Our Best)
- 1 1/2 cups full-fat buttermilk
- 4 tablespoons melted butter
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 425 degrees.
- Put the flour into a large mixing bowl. Make a well in the center and pour in the buttermilk all at once. Fold the flour from the sides of the bowl into the buttermilk, folding very gently until it comes together into a very shaggy mass.
- Dump out onto a generously floured board (use regular all-purpose flour) and work the dough very gently by folding it over several times until it comes together; give it one last fold and then lightly pat the dough to about ¾- to 1-inch thick. Cut out with a 2- to 3-inch floured biscuit cutter and put on a greased baking sheet with the biscuits nearly touching. Either pat out the scraps for more biscuits or use them to bolster the sides of the biscuits to keep them in place as they rise high and wide.
- Brush the tops with half the melted butter and put into the oven to bake for about 20 minutes or until lightly golden brown. Remove from oven and pour the remaining butter over the biscuits. Serve warm.
