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Tuesday, November 30, 2021
The Observer & Baker City Herald
The only
biscuit
recipe
you need
By LIGAYA FIGUERAS
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Biscuits are one of my guilty plea-
sures. I simply cannot pass up one of
these heavenly, flaky, buttery rounds.
Not sure about you, but I’ve got a
biscuit ritual: Snag one hot from the
oven. Slice the already bursting seam
with a knife. Add a pat of good butter
to each half and watch it melt. Do you
know how hard it is not to sneak a bite
as you watch the butter stain the bread
yellow? Dab on fruit preserves, decid-
edly choosing from among the gifted
jars of the homemade variety, ones
that friends felt I was worthy enough
to receive. Coupled with a cup of
coffee, a well-made, well-treated bis-
cuit is a delicious start to a day.
I don’t bake biscuits often because
others make them far better than me.
I’ve been treated to fresh biscuits from
Chadwick Boyd, a food and lifestyle
personality, part-time Atlanta resident
and biscuit aficionado who is a key
figure in the annual International Bis-
cuit Festival in Knoxville, Tennessee.
He makes moist, poufy biscuits look
like a cake walk while I walk the road
toward dry and crumbly.
Not that I haven’t tried to improve.
A few years ago, I worked the line at
Bojangles’. That fast-food chain has
got biscuit-making down to a science
— in 48 steps. That’s at least 45 steps
too many for me.
Plus, why compete with perfection?
Because I’ve since gotten ahold of
a keeper of a biscuit recipe. It calls
for just two ingredients: White Lily
self-rising flour and heavy cream. Per-
haps you know of it. It’s called Jolene
Black’s Cream Biscuits. Originally
published in the Times-Picayune in
April 2005, it is a reader recipe. It has
since been reprinted in “Cooking Up
a Storm — 10th Anniversary: Recipes
Lost and Found From the Times-Pica-
yune of New Orleans.”
As the Times-Picayune editors note,
success comes from sticking with
these two ingredients. “The trick is to
use these exact ingredients. The bis-
cuits won’t be as light if you use any
other kind of self-rising flour. The fat
in the heavy cream replaces the short-
ening or butter in comparable recipes.”
The first time I made these bis-
cuits, I probably should have recorded
my oohs and aahs. I was alone in my
kitchen, talking to no one about my
wonderment and delight at the divine
smell, the sky-high rise of the bread,
and the brevity of the baking project
— it’s not a project; start to finish,
making these biscuits is faster than
washing dishes by hand. I marveled
at the perfection of the liquid-to-dry
ratio. And that we don’t even need to
add salt.
An apple a day might keep the
doctor away. A cream biscuit a day
surely is a recipe for tasting heaven on
earth.
JOLENE BLACK’S
CREAM BISCUITS
2 1/2 cups While Lily self-rising flour
1 1/2 cups heavy cream
Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Lightly
grease a baking sheet.
Put the flour in a medium mixing bowl
and add the cream. Stir until a soft, sticky ball
forms. (The dough will seem wet at first.) On a
very lightly floured surface, knead lightly with
your well-floured hands about 3 times, just
until the dough comes together.
Pat the dough to about 1/2-inch thickness.
Cut out biscuits with a 2 1/2-inch round
cutter. Bake on the prepared baking sheet for
10 to 12 minutes, until the biscuits are golden
brown. Makes 10-12 biscuits.
Nutritional information
Per biscuit, based on 10: 234 calories (per-
cent of calories from fat, 52), 4 g protein, 24 g
carbohydrates, 1 g fiber, 14 g fat (8 g saturat-
ed), 49 mg cholesterol, 410 mg sodium.
— From “Cooking Up a Storm — 10th
Anniversary: Recipes Lost and Found from
the Times-Picayune of New Orleans,” edited
by Judy Walker and Marcelle Bienvenu,
published by Chronicle Books. Published with
permission.
Bethany Jean Clement/The Seattle Times-TNS
Don’t wait for a popup or until somebody opens a nostalgia-driven French bread pizzeria — make your own, maybe even better than you remember, with
bubbly cheese and blackened edges from a few extra minutes under the broiler.
Comfort-food favorite
FRENCH BREAD PIZZA
is back
By BETHANY JEAN CLEMENT
The Seattle Times
SEATTLE — Mention French bread
pizza, and people have feelings. The
reason is right there on the Stouffer’s
French Bread Pizza box, below the cozy
logo of the name inside the outline of a
pot: “Celebrating 40 Years,” it says in a
cursive flourish, and, elsewhere, “Back
to the Taste You Love,” with “Love”
inside the shape of a heart. (Somewhat
unnervingly, the box also feels the need
to specify, “Made with 100% real cheese”
and that the pepperoni contains “pork,
chicken & beef.” Chicken seems weird
for pepperoni-making, but then chicken is
cheap, and so is Stouffer’s French Bread
Pizza — a box of two for $3.99.)
French bread pizza is a classic Amer-
ican come-home-from-school-and-eat-it-
in-front-of-the-TV snack — Stouffer’s if
you were lucky, but also easy enough for
you to make yourself (sometimes, sigh,
substituting English muffins). Hot goo-
eyness atop a pleasingly shaped, light-
and-crispy bread-torpedo — many happy
latchkey moments were made of this; just
add a glass of cold milk and some reruns.
Even Seattle’s best pizza professionals
— masters of cold-fermented, hand-
tossed, beautifully browned-and-bub-
bled actual pizza crust — profess love
of French bread pizza. When I messaged
Tom Siegel of The Independent Pizzeria,
he sent back a laughing-until-crying
cat emoji and said, “I grew up on what
I thought were delicious at the time:
Stouffer’s French bread pizzas! I think I
remember loving the pepperoni.”
Brandon Pettit of Delancey and Dino’s
grew up eating a New Jersey version that
a friend’s mom made: “a can of toma-
toes blended up with a couple heads of
garlic and olive oil spread on French bread
then topped with tons of parm” — not the
classic, but sounds extremely solid.
Marie Rutherford — the poetess piz-
zaiola of erstwhile Moon Pizza (her Ins-
tagram captions achieve lyrical apex)
— waxed reminiscent about “all things
memory-inducing … comforting, familiar,
homey, snug … buildings of bread, sauce,
cheese.”
Rutherford also went to the French-
bread-pizza pop-up put on recently by the
combo of Ben’s Bread (coming to Phinney
Ridge this fall) and Post Alley Pizza
(in, yes, Post Alley for a long time now),
hosted on a warm and breezy summer
evening at The London Plane. She was
by no means alone — only a few minutes
after the party started, a line of 25 sense-
memory supplicants stretched down the
sidewalk (and that’s not counting babies).
Rutherford loved the French bread pizza
she got there: “crunchy, soft … warm, it
smelled so good and it was [expletive] deli-
cious. I could have eaten a few more.”
The good news is that nobody has to
wait for another one-night-only event (or
until somebody opens a French bread piz-
zeria?), and we definitely don’t have to
resort to Stouffer’s (I’m afraid to try the
one in my freezer, as there’s just no pos-
sible way it can live up to its nostalgia
quotient). A huge part of the appeal of
French bread pizza is that it’s so easy and
fast, any impatient latchkey kid or stoned
grown-up can make their own. And with
just a little extra care, this recipe for
French bread pizza will live up to — or
even best — any TV-watching childhood
memories.
AS GOOD AS YOU
REMEMBER FRENCH
BREAD PIZZA (AKA
F.B.P.)
The method of buttering and toasting the bread
to crisp it a bit before saucing/topping is pretty
much ubiquitous on the internet, but rather than
bothering to melt the butter and brush it on, you
can just spread it gently if it’s at room temperature.
The amounts here have been left open-ended — if
you make extra to freeze (see note), your future
binge-watching self will thank you very much.
— Bethany Jean Clement
French bread (fancy or cheap, up to
you, but lighter/airier is better)
Butter (room temperature)
Kosher salt and fresh-ground pepper
Pizza sauce (extra credit if you make
your own — see recipe)
Pizza toppings of your choice (pepperoni
is the Stouffer’s classic)
Shredded whole-milk mozzarella (plus a little
fresh mozzarella and/or cheddar if you like)
Grated Parmesan (Reggiano or other good quality)
1. Preheat your oven to 400 degrees with the rack
in the middle to upper-middle part.
2. Split your bread lengthwise with a good serrat-
ed knife, place on a baking sheet cut-side up, spread
with butter, and sprinkle lightly with kosher salt and
fresh-ground pepper.
3. Bake about 8 minutes, until the top of the
buttered bread has a little crispness to it. Remove
from oven and let cool for a few minutes.
4. OK, you know how to do this! Assemble your
F.B.P.s with sauce, one layer of toppings thin enough
to absorb cheese-heat and plenty of cheese. (Things
to keep in mind: You don’t want to ensoggen [tech-
nical term] your bread with sauce, but you do want
a nice saucy amount — trust your instinct, and you
will find your happy sauce-path. Some say to lay a
few toppings down before the sauce for protection
of bread-integrity, but that seems like overkill to
me, as does, I would like to acknowledge, this entire
parenthetical section — onward!)
5. Bake for another 8-10 minutes or until cheese is
melty and bubbling. Then, for more molten cheese/
blackened bread-edges, throw on the broiler for a
minute or three. (But monitor carefully to prevent
wholesale burning!)
6. Park yourself in front of TV and enjoy.
Note: To freeze French bread pizzas for later: Stick
unbaked F.B.P.s in the freezer for a couple of hours
until completely frozen. Put them in Tupperware/
reused plastic takeout containers, then back into the
freezer they go. To bake from frozen, preheat oven
to 400 degrees, put F.B.P.(s) on a baking sheet, and
bake for about 15 minutes until cheese is melty and
bubbling; then, for more molten cheese/blackened
bread-edges, follow the same process as noted
above.
PRETTY QUICK PIZZA
SAUCE
Don’t be afraid of the sugar. Stouffer’s sure isn’t — it
is their sauce’s third ingredient, just after water and
tomato paste.
— Bethany Jean Clement
1 28-ounce can of whole peeled
San Marzano tomatoes
1 garlic clove, minced
1 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon red wine or sherry vinegar
A few fresh bay leaves or 1 dry leaf
1. Stir all of it together in a medium saucepan and
bring to a bubble over medium-high heat. Turn heat
down to medium, rough-chop the tomatoes with
your spoon, then reduce until sauce is somewhat
thickened, about 25 minutes, stirring occasionally.
2. Fish out bay leaves, then blend sauce with a
hand blender or in a regular blender until piz-
za-sauce smoothness is attained.
3. Add more sugar and/or vinegar to taste; it
might need up to a teaspoon more sugar for a
slight sweetness and up to a tablespoon of vinegar
for brightening, depending on the flavor of your
canned tomatoes. Let cool a bit before using; store
extra in a jar in fridge and use within about a week
(make more F.B.P.s with it!).