I was unexpectedly gifted with a copy of The Pioneer Woman Cooks last week.
(Time for confession: Not only was I unaware that the Pioneer Woman Cooks but I was completely unaware, until this book was bestowed upon me, of the existence of the Pioneer Woman. Such is the result of my shucking the yoke of media hypersensationalism.)
I may not know the Pioneer Woman Ree Drummond, but, I realized as I browsed this lovely cookbook, I grew up with a person who was a Genuine, Bright-and-Shiny Pioneer Woman: my grandma, Christina Ashley.
Which leads me to the reason I am here before you today. I am here to challenge Ree Drummond to a duel: Grandma Ashley's biscuits vs. the biscuits of the Pioneer Woman.
Grandma made biscuits every morning, before the sun came up, in her small kitchen in her farm home in Louisiana. She was born in 1898, married at sixteen, had her first child by seventeen, and fed and clothed five children with her husband out of a hundred acre farm thirty miles from the Mississippi River.
Here is Grandma's "reciepe" for "bisquits", send to me when I married in 1978:
I started this duel by mixing up a batch of Grandma's biscuits. I followed her advice ("That's what I do") and made them out myself:
While these were baking in my Very Hot Oven, I mixed up a batch of the Pioneer Woman's Buttermilk Biscuits, using the recipe from
The Pioneer Woman Cooks:
Buttermilk Biscuits
Ingredients:
4 cups all purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp salt
2 1/2 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/3 cup shortening
1/3 cup cold butter (5 1/3 tablespoons), cut into pieces
1 1/4 cups buttermilk
Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 450.
2. In large bowl, combine all the dry ingredients and stir together. Add the shortening and cold butter pieces. With pastry blender, cut the shortening and butter into dry ingredients until it resembles coarse crumbs.
3. Pour in the buttermilk and mix gently with fork until just combined. The biscuit dough will be sticky, not overly dry or crumbly.
4. Lightly flour a clean surface. Turn the dough out of the bowl and roll to a 3/4″ thickness. Cut rounds with a biscuit cutter and place them on a cookie sheet. Bake for 11-14 minutes until golden brown. Do not underbake, or the biscuits will be doughy.
I think you will agree with me that this is an unduly fussy recipe, so:
Two points to Grandma for Recipe Simplicity.
Here's what the Pioneer Woman's Buttermilk Biscuits looked like (cut-out with a biscuit cutter):
Many people would give big points to the Pioneer Woman for Overall Aesthetic Appearance, both before baking (see photos above) and after baking (as this side-by-side with Grandma on the left, Pioneer Woman on the right, post-baking photo demonstrates below). But I am, of course, a wabi-sabi person, finding Great Beauty in the Imperfect.
So, Two points to Grandma for Wabi-Sabi Biscuit Beauty.
Here is the final, and most important evaluation of the two biscuits: Taste. For this, I relied on an Experienced Biscuit Eating Expert, my husband, Jim Nance. For this final test, my husband first sampled Grandma's biscuit, then cleaned his palate with a drink of water, and then sampled the Pioneer Woman's biscuit.
I am happy to report that my husband chose Grandma's biscuit over the Pioneer Woman's biscuit, for taste. "Lots more flavor in Grandma's biscuit," he told me.
So, Two points to Grandma for Taste.
Grandma is, certainly, the winner over Pioneer Woman. Good job, Grandma!
Note to Pioneer Woman: Don't let this setback discourage you, Pioneer Woman. When you have prepared biscuits every morning for over seventy years and have had to bake biscuits in a wood-burning oven for many of those years, then you can climb back into the arena with my Grandma Ashley.
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