You’re never too far from a buttermilk biscuit in the South. They feature in some of my earliest memories. Every year at the Mississippi State Fair in October, alongside the amateur country music acts and the saltwater taffy stand, there was a donkey driving a cane crusher to extract the sweet juices from freshly cut sorghum stalks. The juice was boiled down on site while volunteer mothers and grandmothers baked buttermilk biscuits to be served warm, filled with the fresh syrup. I preferred this treat to all the rest of the fair menu. You could eat as many as you wanted and they were completely free.
There are various types of biscuit, though all are built from more or less the same foundation of flour, lard butter, and buttermilk. These simple biscuits have a shorter crumb and are perfect for smothering with Sausage Gravy. The Angel Biscuits are lighter and flakier, perfect for building a breakfast sandwich.