Hi Breadit, can you help me figure out what is wrong with my grandma’s biscuit recipe? (Story in comments)
A little backstory: this is a Great Depression era recipe that my grandma baked her whole life. My dad grew up having them daily, and then I grew up having them daily. Once I hit adulthood I begged her for the recipe, and she said she never had written it down but would do her best to guess. Unfortunately by this point, she had developed Alzheimer’s, so I have suspicions that the “recipe” is not quite right. I know this recipe is simple but I love these biscuits dearly and I want nothing more to figure out what I’m doing wrong.
The biscuits: I remember them being very tall (probably double their width) and very fluffy. The inside was a nice almost white color and the outsides got brown and pretty crispy. The dough itself I remember being extremely sticky. I also remember she would melt some shortening in the pan in the oven while it was heating. Not sure if she dipped both bottom and top of biscuits in the melted shortening, but I think she did.
All of my attempts so far have yielded similar tasting biscuits but they do not look right. Mine are short and take a lot longer to bake than she indicated they would. They also are not quite as fluffy and more dense. I have tried cutting in cold shortening, but it made them too flakey, I have tried messing with bake time, no major changes. Also I have tried adding in more biscuits to the pan to see if that would force them to get taller, but it did not.
I appreciate any and all recommendations. I have been trying to recreate her biscuits for like 15 years.