One must lean toward epis­tle or apho­rism rather than dis­ser­ta­tion; the act of widdershins.

Life feels like it is just prac­tice because it is just practice. 

One must imag­ine Sisy­phus’ recog­ni­tion that there is an end to just prac­tice; that there is no end to just prac­tice; that there is no just practice.

The day of reck­on­ing is always a loss of just practice.

One must imag­ine alter­na­tive cul­tur­al evo­lu­tions sans the bro­ken arrow of cap­i­tal or commune.

Jain wis­dom of wind­fall. What six hun­dred and fifty thou­sand years of grace and grat­i­tude does to humankind. What dif­fer­ent things we know by accept­ing what is no longer need­ed and just prac­tic­ing with it. Dropped feath­er by dropped feath­er — to fly — as a bird flies.

The knife is sharp­ened by hard­ness // the jel­ly­fish sus­tained by being what its world is

One must imag­ine there is always, at the least, a third choice.

You are the third choice — just practice.

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The Recipe

• 2C flour
• 1C milk
• 6T short­en­ing
• 1T (heap­ing) bak­ing powder
• 1T (heap­ing) sugar
• 1t salt
• pinch of bak­ing soda

1. Pre­heat oven to 325F
2. Com­bine all the dry ingre­di­ents in a mix­ing bowl with a fork
3. Com­bine the short­en­ing and the dry ingre­di­ents with a fork until you’ve got small­ish crumbs
4. Add the milk and mix with a spoon until it is as con­sis­tent­ly mixed in as it will get. It will still be most­ly dry and won’t hold togeth­er. We’re talk­ing about a dozen stir/folds, it does­n’t take long.
5. Flour a flat sur­face and put the bis­cuit dough on it.
6. Flour your hands and form the dough into a loose mound, then flat­ten it out until it is about an 8x10 rec­tan­gle and half an inch thick.
7. Use a but­ter knife (ok), pie serv­er (bet­ter), or bench scraper (best) to fold the dough into thirds like you would fold a let­ter to mail.
8. Rotate 90 degrees so the long side is per­pen­dic­u­lar to you and flat­ten again.
9. Repeat steps 7 & 8 once or twice more. If the dough begins to feel at all tough, stop.
10. Flat­ten the dough into a rec­tan­gle a 1/2 inch thick, cut, and put onto a bak­ing sheet.
11. Bake at 325F for 15 min­utes, then turn the heat up to 450F.
12. When the oven reach­es 450F, turn it back down to 350F and keep an eye on the bis­cuits until they are as gold­en brown as you’d like them to be.

The Long-Ass Story Legally Required To Accompany A Recipe Weblog Post

The goal of this process is to make tasty bis­cuits in a short amount of time, with as lit­tle fuss as pos­si­ble. The goal with this recipe was not to make the best bis­cuits ever, or to flex at culi­nary tal­ent; but, to put it anoth­er way, to make bis­cuits from scratch that are as good as, if not bet­ter than, the stuff you get from a Pills­bury can. 

This recipe will get fresh, tasty bis­cuits into your bel­ly in less than an hour.

If you’ve got the time and mon­ey, feel free to freeze your but­ter and grate it with a cheese grater, buy high pro­tein flour, a fan­cy rolling pin, bench scraper, pas­try cut­ter, bis­cuit cut­ters, flour sifters, and mea­sure your dough exact­ly, refrig­er­ate it overnight, and nev­er actu­al­ly get your hands dirty while mak­ing bis­cuits. You do you, and have fun with it. I don’t think folks in the South mak­ing bis­cuits had most of those things (espe­cial­ly refrig­er­a­tion) and they made bis­cuits just fine.

You can make this recipe with noth­ing more than a fork, a knife, and a bowl.

That said, I have found a bench scraper, pas­try cut­ter, and bis­cuit cut­ter do save a lot of time. Remem­ber, fresh, tasty bis­cuits into your bel­ly in less than an hour.

I tried the Amer­i­ca’s Test Kitchen bis­cuit recipe, which was most­ly non­sense except for the fold­ing method. There are a cou­ple of oth­er tricks if you’re aim­ing for per­fect bis­cuits (Iike trim­ming the edges so they fluff even­ly), but the only tech­nique worth remem­ber­ing is the fold. The recipe I set­tled on is adapt­ed from J.P.‘s Big Dad­dy Bis­cuits.

Riffing on the Recipe

Use but­ter, use short­en­ing, use whole milk, but­ter­milk, or soy milk with a shot of apple cider vine­gar (if you want to make these veg­an). It does­n’t mat­ter. Chill­ing the ingre­di­ents does­n’t mat­ter. You can cut these bis­cuits square or round, but at least use the left­over dough so there’s no waste. Even if the franken­bis­cuit does­n’t look pret­ty, it tastes great, and you need to eat one of them right out of the oven any­way or are you even human? Use less or more fat to get the taste right, spread a lit­tle but­ter on the mid­dle lay­er of your fold­ing and you’ll get a clean place to cut your bis­cuits when they’re done. Tweak the bak­ing powder/baking soda lev­els and exper­i­ment with the fluffi­ness. Have fun.

The thing to remem­ber is that many recipes warn you about work­ing the dough too much. This is true, but this is only true in the kneading/folding phase, and you can tell as soon as it starts to tough­en up. Once that hap­pens you’ve already worked it too much, but with prac­tice you’ll find the sweet spot. Even slight­ly over-worked bis­cuits are still great, they just aren’t as fluffy.

Pics or GTFO

Bis­cuits pho­tos are most­ly chrono­log­i­cal. Now the last pho­to is what my bis­cuits look like most of the time, from scratch into my bel­ly with­in an hour.