Learn to make the ultimate Southern biscuit with Cheryl Day of Back in the Day Bakery

I’ll never have time to prepare all the food like my grandmother, but I want to be more grounded and better connected with some of the food I do eat. This year, I’m learning to bake as a way of connecting with positive things from the past that can also support new goals for the future.

Recently, I had a crash-course lesson in learning how to make Cheryl Day’s Flaky Butter Biscuits — it’s the same recipe used at her iconic Back in the Day Bakery, 2403 Bull St. in the former Starland Dairy general store. They’re fluffy, buttery and delicious, and you can make them at home, too. Cheryl was so kind in taking time out of her day to entertain my New Year’s resolution of learning to make

When making biscuits, the temperature of the butter is crucial. It has to stay fairly cool in order to form flaky layers and rise. I remember my grandmother would cut in the butter with forks. But Cheryl has a different way that completely works.

“You want to cover the butter in flour first, that protects it from getting too warm,” she said. “Then we’ll use a pastry cutter to blend the butter before we use our hands to tear it into smaller chunks and shards. If you have cold hands, that’s a perk for making biscuits.”

And, I do, have cold hands going for me!

There’s a lot of butter—three sticks for this recipe—that we incorporate into five-and-a-half cups of flour plus a few other dry ingredients. It’s meditative, blending everything, making sure not to get it all too warm.

Once the butter is mixed in various sizes throughout the flour, Cheryl explains we add buttermilk by making a well in the center of the ingredients and pouring some of the buttermilk into it. Then with our hands, mix the buttermilk little by little until all two cups are gone, and there’s no more dry flour.

It’s all about folding the ingredients with the heels of your hands, smearing and turning the dough, again, making sure it all stays cool. Yes, your hands will be covered—it’s one hundred percent hands-on, messy, and fun.

“Next we roll it out to about 1-inch thick and start cutting biscuits,” said Cheryl. “When you use the biscuit cutter, don’t twist it. That seals off the layers we made by folding the dough and then the biscuits won’t rise. Just push the cutter straight down then straight back up.”

I completely defer to Cheryl for rolling out the biscuits—she’s the expert, and I can’t recall anytime in the last 20 years that I’ve even seen a rolling pin much less used one. After they’re cut and on the baking sheet, we brush them with melted butter and a dusting of sea salt before popping them in the oven for 25 minutes.

When they’re finished, we open them up, steaming, and add butter and jam. And for a few moments, I’m a child with my grandmother in the farm kitchen eating biscuits with blackberry preserves, thinking about the cows, the honey bees in the oak tree, and the pond where my cousins and I catch tadpoles. The taste and smell of biscuits and jam bring those moments back to me, the very best of all the best things.

Credit: Excerpted from Cheryl Day's Treasury of Southern Baking by Cheryl Day (Artisan Books). Copyright © 2021. Photographs by Angie Mosier

Credit: Excerpted from Cheryl Day's Treasury of Southern Baking by Cheryl Day (Artisan Books). Copyright © 2021. Photographs by Angie Mosier

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This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: Learn to make the ultimate Southern biscuit with Cheryl Day of Back in the Day Bakery