Thoughts on Biscuit Making

We arrived back from Vermont somewhat late last night. It was a good trip and my daughter is very good at making friends. She was running around and going up to just about anyone hoping they would smile at her. Luckily, pretty much every at UFVA is easygoing and likes kids so she was a hit. I took two and a half rolls of film while in Vermont so hopefully I will have some good photos soon. 

Before we left for our trip my husband made biscuits for dinner (as pictured above). It made me think of a story my dad tells about his grandmother, my great-grandmother. I believe the story is of my great-grandmother who was raised on a farm outside of Paris, TX. She moved to Winfield, LA, which is where my grandmother was born. In her cupboard she had a drawer (one of those triangular metal ones that pulls out at an angle) where she stored her flour. When making biscuits she would take the ingredients to the drawer pour everything on top and knead the dough in the flour so that she would be able to use the exact amount of flour without measuring it out.

I have heard others tell similar stories of biscuits made in the flour bin. I wonder if this is a lost art of baking. Often I think of bakers having to measure everything perfectly, yet, clearly that is not always a case. In this day biscuits are probably not made from scratch as often as in the past and our skills have gotten weak. I would try it just for the experiment of it all, but unfortunately I store my flour in a jar and it would be hard to knead dough through the jar opening.