Erika Council Transcript
Jessie Sheehan:
Hi peeps, you're listening to She's My Cherry Pie, the baking podcast from The Cherry Bombe Podcast Network. I'm your host, Jessie Sheehan. I'm a baker, recipe developer, and author of four baking books, including “Salty, Cheesy, Herby, Crispy Snackable Bakes.” On each episode, I hang out with the sweetest bakers around and take a deep dive into their signature bakes.
Today's guest is Erika Council, the baker, writer, and biscuit maker extraordinaire behind the beloved Bomb Biscuit Company in Atlanta, Georgia. Erika's fluffy, buttery biscuits have earned her fans far and wide, and she's garnered a James Beard Foundation nomination for Best Chef: Southeast and was one of Food & Wine's Best New Chefs of 2024. Erika is also the author of the baking book, “Still We Rise: A Love Letter to the Southern Biscuit,” with over 70 sweet and savory recipes. The book is a tribute to her family's deep roots in the South, her culinary heritage, and the legacy of both her grandmothers. Erika joins me to chat about the art of biscuit making, her journey from starting as a pop-up and delivery business to having a brick-and-mortar, and why hospitality is at the heart of everything she does. We also talk about her two grandmothers, Mildred and Geraldine, and the impact they had on Erika's biscuit journey, the pantry prison where little Erika was sent during timeouts, and how much she loved it, and the telltale sign of a good southern cook. Spoiler alert, it involves bacon grease. Plus, she walks me through the Bomb Buttermilk Biscuit recipe from her book. And let me tell you, I can't wait to make a visit down to Atlanta just to try this biscuit, especially with the fried chicken. Yum. Stay tuned for our chat. You can find today's recipe at cherrybombe.com.
Today's episode is presented by California Prunes. Just this morning, I made my go-to smoothie of kale, blueberries, and prunes, and I couldn't have had a better morning. It's so good. I've been snacking on California Prunes since forever, and I love knowing how good they are for your gut, your heart, and particularly for your bones. They contain dietary fiber and other nutrients to support good gut health and vitamin K, copper, and antioxidants to support healthy bones. If you're trying to find ways to swap in natural sugars into your diet like I did in my smoothie, prunes are there for you. I have a feeling there are some bakers listening. You guys probably already know how classic prunes are in French baking. I love baking a prune clafoutis because not only do the deep purple prunes look so beautiful in the light custard batter, but the fruit plumps up and gets even juicier when baked. And when I'm not baking with them, I'm snacking. I stash a container of prunes in my pantry for a sweet treat whenever I need it and I pack a little bag of them to take on planes, usually paired with some salty almonds. For more info and recipes that range from prune cocktails to cakes, check out the California Prunes website at californiaprunes.org. That's californiaprunes.org.
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Let's chat with today's guest. Erika, so excited to have you on She's My Cherry Pie and to talk Bomb Buttermilk Biscuits with you and so much more.
Erika Council:
Yeah, yeah. I love the name She's My Cherry Pie. I have that song playing in my head.
Jessie Sheehan:
Biscuits have quite literally shaped your life, and as such, the first thing you ever baked, I read, was biscuits.
Erika Council:
Mm-hmm.
Jessie Sheehan:
Can you share an early biscuit-eating experience or baking experience with us?
Erika Council:
Absolutely. Well, I'll share both and why I wanted to be able to make biscuits. I think everyone has the story of standing at their grandmother's knee, learning how to bake and cook. And while I did very much have those experiences, I think one of the things for me was everyone could cook, and the people who just received such adulation and just had beams of halo around them were definitely the church ladies who would run the church kitchen on first Sundays. And literally all of them could make biscuits and things like that. So in my mind, it was kind of like if you want to grow up to be somebody, you have to at least know how to cook on this level because it's just all I ever saw. Okay, so I'm going to be a really good cook. I need to know how to make biscuits and pound cakes and things like that.
So I always knew I loved biscuits, obviously, but I knew that that was something I needed to perfect to where people wanted to come and eat at my house. I love southern ladies who'd be like, "Yeah, we're going to eat, but we're not going to eat her. She doesn't know how to make such and such." I just know I never wanted anyone to talk about me like that. And my grandma was like the queen of shade when it came to, "Well, maybe you shouldn't make the cake, but you can bring some potato salad." That meant that she didn't like the way you bake cakes. So I didn't want to be on that end of the conversation ever. For me, my granny on my mom's side, obviously my father's side, everyone over there cooked on professional levels because my grandmother Dip had a restaurant. And all my aunts and their families worked in that restaurant, so it was very professional-level cooking.
And then on my mom's side, I grew up with the blue ribbon pie, baking, great aunt, uncle, and grandma. It was just everyone could cook and bake. And so when she would make biscuits or cakes or pies, I just knew I wanted to be able to do the same. So it was one time I was very young, I want to say nine or 10. My mom tells me my age is wrong in the book, but I just knew that I found a biscuit recipe and I was going to make my granny some biscuits and it went absolutely terrible. Yes, I burned them and I think what happened, I just put too much of everything in it. So it is just this sort of ocean of Crisco and butter just melted to the bottom of the oven because they were on a pan that was like a baker's rack.
It just was wrong. And the fire alarm was going off, and my granny runs up front, she's like, "What's happening? What's going on?" And we pulled the biscuits out and I just was so upset. It was like, I just knew I could do this. I had seen them, but I really hadn't. But when you're a kid, you're like, "Yeah, I can do this. I can do this. It's going to be fine." And she said, "No, no, you're not going to get upset. We're going to eat them. We're going to see what you did wrong." And she just grabbed some orange marmalade, which was her favorite jam to eat.
And she sat there and ate those biscuits. And I tried to eat them and I knew they were disgusting, but I kind of finished the one I had too because she was finishing it. And I think that just taught me such a profound lesson, not just about baking, but seeing it all the way through. And just like every aspect in life, you can't look at what went wrong if you don't dissect what you did, you know what I mean? And that has stayed with me my whole life. So that's my experience with biscuits and cooking. And then also why I just always wanted to be really good at it.
Jessie Sheehan:
I loved this so much in the book, The Pantry Prison. Tell us about the pantry prison. I really feel like it's related to your love of food.
Erika Council:
I loved that place. It was an old house, so my great-Aunt Mabel, who was Granny Geraldine's sister, there's always one you stay in the hometown, you live here, you make a life for yourself. Someone always gets a family home. So my Aunt Mabel, my great-aunt Mabel, was the one that lived there. My big daddy, my great-grandfather, I think they built the house in 1905. It was a very, very old house that I'm pretty sure it was haunted. But my cousin Sarah used to run in the hall. He was like, "Oh, someone's coming in the middle of the night," and saw shadows. So there was this pantry, I guess it was kind of insulated in where they used to keep things cold stored, but it wasn't really, it was like a dry goods pantry. Obviously, they had changed things around in the eighties by then, but that's her mom, Mabel, who also grew a lot of her own vegetables and the lady peas and all that was in jars. It wasn't a lot of grocery store stuff because the stuff they put in the grocery store would kill you, those kinds of things.
But when you got in trouble, you had to go sit in the pantry. My cousin Sarah and then some of the other cousins who were young, they hated it. They would cry. And I just was, especially when I was really small, it was really tall. It kind of spanned the whole two stories almost because that was just the whole side of the house. And I would just look up, there was jars in there that had to have been 10, 20, 30 years old. And I just remember when they would put me in there and it was one particular time, "So have you learned anything?" And I just shouted off all the stuff that was expired and I was counting the beans in there. But I felt like I was, when the Disney princesses were really coming out like '83 when those stories were really coming to be, and it was just like, "Yeah, I'm a queen and I'm stuck in this pantry."
There was this little window that they had added on later that was way up. You couldn't even look out of it. You couldn't reach it. Once you got older you could. And I just thought of myself as this queen locked in this castle waiting to be saved in this pantry. And it is just so exciting to me. I just made up these things. I was in trouble because something I did, but it's like, "Sure, put me in a pantry."
Jessie Sheehan:
We'll be right back. Peeps, guess who is on the cover of Cherry Bombe’s upcoming Italy Issue? It’s Chef Missy Robbins of Lilia, Misi, and MISIPASTA in New York City, and Chef Nancy Silverton of Osteria Mozza, Chi Spacca, and more in Los Angeles. Yes, we have two covers. We couldn’t be more excited to have these two iconic chefs grace the cover. Their careers have focused on bringing the best of Italian cooking to the U.S. The entire issue is about la dolce vita—with delicious recipes, beautiful photography, and stories that will transport you straight to the trattorias, bakeries, and gelato stands. The Italy Issue will be out this September. Head to cherrybombe.com or click the link in our show notes to subscribe and get ready to say ciao bella to your favorite new issue. Now, back to our guest.
So food and hospitality clearly played a really important role in your family, particularly when it came to your grandmothers. In terms of your mom though, this was sort of what I got from researching and reading. She was less of a cook and a baker than your two grandmothers, correct?
Erika Council:
Yes. We'll use the term less. So when she listens to this, she won't be like, "Oh, no you telling..." No, she was not. And I say for my mom was a single mother trying to raise a child. She did. And go to grad school and achieve a career. She worked at IBM, she's a software engineer, so that was her focus. She dined out and always looked fabulous dining out. So I think I kind of picked up some things like that from her. But grilling was her thing. She loved to grill, turn the grill on. But she had some very different experiences. She worked at a five-and-dime counter lunch spot that she had originally been kicked out of because she drank out of a white southern water fountain. So her memories of food were just kind of like, "Yeah, no, I'm not going to do this because this sucks." But yeah, I mean she can cook. Does she want to, not necessarily.
Jessie Sheehan:
When you were little, maybe as a teenager, I'm not sure what age you actually worked at both Mama Dips and at the church kitchens, where Geraldine would've been kind of in charge, is that right?
Erika Council:
Yeah, so my whole life growing up, I spent all my summers and weekends mainly with my granny. The church was her, I call her the CEO because she was involved in everything, not necessarily that they wanted her to be involved in, but she would insert herself. But she ran the church kitchen. So yeah, anything that had to do with that, washing dishes, cleaning up, washing the tables in the church.
Jessie Sheehan:
Would they let you bake? Would you be able to bake when you were doing it? No.
Erika Council:
No, absolutely not. But I did help at home and then bring it too, and they would do things like that. My specialty was deviled eggs for a long time because that was easy to make that and egg salad when they would have the little tea lunches. But the soup kitchen thing they would do was very interesting, and they would do that on Monday mornings and it would open it up to the... But it was just anybody wanted to come and eat and they would make this tomato soup and grilled cheese, and I really enjoyed that. So that was the church kitchen.
And for Mama Dibs was just sort of, my parents were divorced, so when I would stay with my dad I would end up at my Grandma Dip’s house. And yeah, you worked there. If you spent time and worked. It wasn't really, that was kind of what you did. And that's exposed me to, it wasn't a lot, but it exposed me to the ins and outs of restaurants and things of that and just made me know that I wanted to go to this college and never work in the restaurant industry ever.
Jessie Sheehan:
Just as you said, you grew up seeing up close the difficulties of running a restaurant. So you at least when you were 19 years old or 18 years old, said, "No, that's not for me." And kind of pursued, I guess a little bit in your mom's path. You pursued a degree in software engineering and did that for about 20 years, but you never, biscuits were in your blood obviously, and you never stopped being obsessed with them. And so you started in 2016 kind of doing pop-ups and realizing, "Oh wow, people love my fried chicken biscuits, country ham." And first of all of these things are my favorite things in the world. So just saying them out loud is making me so hungry. But fried chicken biscuits, country ham and pimento cheese, beignets. Were you doing beignets at these pop-ups?
Erika Council:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh my gosh, I love beignets.
Erika Council:
Oh gosh. It kind of grew organically, I'll say. I was married really young, and I had my daughter, and that didn't work out. It happens. I just packed up and moved to Atlanta and I got a job down here. It was not too many years I met my husband now. But in that time I was taking second job, I worked at the Cheesecake Factory. I had a very good day job. But when you're single and you have a mouth to feed, it's not always enough. So I did a lot of waitressing gigs and stuff and I was always bringing things for people to eat and I had a little apartment and I would make Sunday dinner and people would come over. And then once I got married again, I started the Sunday dinner, it just grew and people would bring people with them.
And then one day my husband was like, "Well, maybe you should host this somewhere else." Not saying it, we can't do this anymore. We're just like, "Wow, there's a lot of people here." And it'd be like 10 but it obviously in my mind was just sort of pushing me but it brought me comfort when I was a single mom and just struggling at some time cooking and doing things like that just calms my nerves. Cooking for people and feeding people and having them come in and we're just eating and talking. It just helps take your mind off of the woes going on. It doesn't necessarily make it go away, but it definitely takes your mind off of it.
And then once things started getting better obviously I just would cook and people would come over. And I met two other ladies that it is not always in the book, but there was these two ladies here who made pickles and they had built out this sort of warehouse where they made the pickles. They had a commercial kitchen, but in the front was a long dinner table and they were like, "Hey, you can host your pop-ups here." And that was literally the first one I ever did and it was just great and I just started doing it once a month. And that just is where it grew into doing the pop-ups with my friend that had a barbecue restaurant and it just opening a brick and mortar, it just was very organic. I always love talking about it because people are like, "You just really took your time." I was like, "Yeah, I was convinced that I would never open a restaurant." I'm like the most anti-restaurant-opening restaurant owner probably in existence. It took me almost five years to convince myself, "Okay, maybe I can do it."
Jessie Sheehan:
How much time did it take between the starting of the pop-ups and quitting your job? Or did you not quit your engineering job until you opened the brick-and-mortar?
Erika Council:
I was still working when I had the brick and mortar. I want to say, because 2020, we got the little stall. 2022, so when we moved to the bigger restaurant is when I stopped taking consulting gigs. So I was still two years, I was still working at night taking consulting gigs-
Jessie Sheehan:
Incredible.
Erika Council:
... because there's no money in this restaurant business.
Jessie Sheehan:
I get it, I get it.
Erika Council:
So my husband is a software engineer, he still does that, but now he's kind of gotten full throttle in the restaurant side because we've grown so much but he still has a full-time job. To go from those two people making that level of salary to just one. And then our whole life-saving going into this restaurant, I was like, "Oh no, I'm going to keep working with two kids."
Jessie Sheehan:
So the pop-ups sort of came to a screeching halt in, I guess probably March of 2020 with the pandemic. I love this. You pivoted to delivery because a client, you've been doing events and not just doing pop-ups but doing events, et cetera. And former client asked if you would bake biscuits and drop them off for their employees that were working from home. And I love your turn of phrase, but you called it the Biscuit Drop, which is the best name. And it was just like a home delivery service featuring buttermilk biscuits, pies, there some vegan options. So smart.
Erika Council:
Yeah. And it's so funny, when I got that email, we were doing catering through Brian Furman who had the barbecue restaurant. And I got that email and I just remember thinking I said it out loud and I was like, "I'm not riding around Atlanta dropping off biscuits. What do I look like?" And my daughter who was home from college, obviously it was because of COVID, she was like, "Yeah, let's do it. You know, you are young. "Yeah, let's do it." And we did. And it just the last one we did before, I said, "Okay, yes, I'm getting a brick and mortar." It was almost 160 deliveries that. And I said, "Yeah, we're not going to, they got to come get it."
Jessie Sheehan:
So smart. So you opened the brick and mortar in 2021 and you quickly gained this reputation for the fried chicken biscuit sandwiches, your OG cinnamon rolls, the church brunch staples. Please tell us about Bomb Biscuit Company. I don't even know where I lifted this quote from but, "A perpetually slammed breakfast and brunch restaurant," which is like the perpetually slammed, I just love.
Erika Council:
Yeah, slammed too is and if you come on the weekend, you can't get in, which I hate. I'm very sorry y'all. When people ask me that question, I almost don't know how to answer it. It still blows me away. The name though is funny because it was Bomb Ass Biscuits and Branita, my mother, told me, "You need to take the off the end. We're not going to do that." And that just really kind of came from with my co-workers. Chad, I would bring in food and his was when we were working IT, he was like, "This is shit is bomb. If you ever open, you need to call it the Bomb Ass Biscuit." And I just would make a joke like, "I'm definitely naming anything I have Bomb Ass Biscuit because this is amazing." And so that's just kind of where Bomb Biscuit, a lot of people say BB Co., all that kind of came from and we are perpetually slammed in the back.
Jessie Sheehan:
I noticed that you're referring to it as a restaurant and I was calling it a bakery, so apologies. But it's more of a restaurant where you can go in, sit down, get these, another description, these gravity-defying breakfast sandwiches, you can sit down and order as well as take things to go.
Erika Council:
Yeah, I've viewed away from bakery because people will come and be like, "Oh, I can't buy a hundred cinnamon rolls at once," because we have cinnamon rolls, but that's just not the main food. You come buy a hundred biscuits if you like. We have sweets, savory, everything sandwiches, breakfast. So we are definitely more of a restaurant, breakfast brunch restaurant versus just bakery. I do want a bakery though. I do want to do a little bakery.
Jessie Sheehan:
Okay, good. We're manifesting that right now. And can you describe, I of course wanted to talk about biscuits with you, but if I could have several conversations with you, I would want to also talk about the cinnamon, tell us about the cinnamon rolls.
Erika Council:
So the cinnamon rolls, I mean just your basic, not basic, but they're our brioche, those cinnamon rolls. They're phenomenal. We do use buttermilk. It is a local brand here in Atlanta called Banner Butter who's churning that fresh buttermilk daily. And I will always say that my biscuits are huge and fluffy and buttery because I'm using really real fresh buttermilk, real butter, getting that from him. So our cinnamon rolls are just your basic. Sometimes I do special ones where I'll do banana pudding, cheesecake or strawberry cheesecake, chocolate chip s'mores cinnamon rolls. But for the most part it's our traditional brown sugar cinnamon roll with cream cheese, icing, cinnamon roll.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yum. Also, I love this story. So the restaurant, when you guys first opened it, your husband had a particular idea about how the walls should be painted and he wanted to surprise you with that idea. The color's pale yellow.
Erika Council:
So yeah, so I had a photo of Granny Geraldine. Her kitchen was always this pale yellow color and she eventually painted her cabinet doors pink, but it was always this pale yellow color. Even if you look at photos from the sixties and seventies it's that color. And it's just something about it that makes you feel when you walked in her kitchen, you just felt like everything was okay. And that was everyone, even just random people off the street because she would feed literally anyone that came to the door and wanted something to eat. I have all these pictures of her in my house obviously, and I remember telling my husband, I was like, "I really hope I can get some trim or something like that painted in a yellow color," not necessarily matching because I'm thinking this is eighties, seventies yellow, no one's going to be able to find that.
When I walked in one day, I had been away two days and he told me, "Don't come. They're painting. You don't want to inhale." And I'm thinking, "Okay, well we painted it white, we had discussed the white and sort of the black." And I walked in and the whole banner, the painter and my husband had matched the color completely. And it is like I might cry now. I just cried for three or four days. I could not walk into that restaurant without just bursting into tears. It was the exact same color. Shout out to Sherman Williams and whoever that was that dealt with my husband. It was the exact same yellow color. I just couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe it. So yes, it looks like butter almost.
Jessie Sheehan:
Which is perfect. We're going to talk about your book now, but I wondered before we do, and it's a good segue, tell us about the development of the Bomb Biscuit that we're going to talk about. Developing that recipe, did you already have it before you even opened the restaurant of the drop biscuit situation?
Erika Council:
I did. I think I started some of the development in adding baking soda and baking powder it came from making guarantee that biscuit rise is super high. So having two leavening agents is really what made me introduce that. So knowing that I eventually was not going to be the person back here making me these biscuits all the time, I wanted to have a guaranteed way of sort of maximizing, I wanted that high, tall biscuit. So that was why when I'm at home, a lot of times it's just baking powder that I use and don't necessarily always use the baking soda.
Jessie Sheehan:
Do you feel like you need the soda because of the buttermilk? Can you make a buttermilk biscuit with just baking powder and you're still going to get a rise and you're still going to get a tang?
Erika Council:
You can, but it won't be like if you add that baking soda because it's reacting to the acid. And I really wanted to sort of have the tang and the rise at the same time. The buttermilk I'm getting is real versus the one in the grocery store that has the additives in it, it's just skim milk. And so I just wanted to be sure that I had that extra little added flair to give that touch of what they might not be doing at home. But like I write in my book, people made biscuits with whole milk, evaporated milk. I had them all growing up, so it wasn't like buttermilk had to be used to make biscuits for me, but I just know that my favorite biscuit has the buttermilk in it, so that's what I'm gonna use.
Jessie Sheehan:
So now I want to talk about “Still We Rise.” I love your writing. It's funny, it's so personal, and the recipes are so thorough and well-written. It's just such a pleasure to read. And you described the book as a love letter to the southern biscuit and Black culinary excellence. Can you unpack that for us?
Erika Council:
Yeah, so I definitely would always get questions about, "Well, where did you learn this from? Who taught you?" Especially as I got more creative with the biscuits, the peanut butter jelly biscuits or when I would do ferments and potatoes and they always wanted to mention a chef that did not inspire me to make that. And I just wanted to sort of put a book together to highlight the people who were never mentioned like the Dargen Sisters and Princess Pamela. And these were books that I had exposure to and I looked for, searched for because of Cleo R. Butler. And yeah, there's phenomenal baking books all written by white chefs. It was just for me, I wanted to know where the books were that were written because I was like, "I know they exist." This was when I was 2020 really trying to learn how to bake, I mean, to really elevate.
And so I searched and a lot of them were in libraries or I had to thrift shops or things like that. And it was just like no going to Books-A-Million or Barnes and Noble and finding some of these books. So a lot of these books I just would get and I would keep them and just sort of cook and bake out of them and just take the recipes and try to turn them into my own. So when it came time to really write about the biscuits and just how I came about some of the ideas for them, I really just wanted to highlight how I got here and the people's stories and recipes that sort of shaped this journey for me.
Jessie Sheehan:
So now I want to talk about the Bomb Buttermilk Biscuits, your recipe. I love that you call the biscuit your homegirl and Mrs. Buttermilk which I thought was, I love that. So cute, Mrs. Buttermilk. What I also love about the way you write this recipe is that you tell us why you do every single thing. And I appreciate that. Some more experienced bakers just instinctually know, but I appreciate that you like right now we're going to talk about why the oven rack is in the middle of the oven and so many recipes begin that way. So few recipe writers then tell you why.
So we're going to adjust the oven rack so it's in the middle position and we're going to preheat the oven to 450. And I had a question about the temperature I'll ask you in one sec, but then you say the middle rack position is ideal for baking because it situates the biscuits in the middle of the oven allowing the hot air to circulate around the pan and it results in even baking. And I just, some might say, "Oh, I knew that," but it's nice to see you spell that out because I'm sure some people are like, "Well, I'm not moving the rack."
Erika Council:
Yeah, as I wrote these recipes and had little notes on the side, I had Mary Shoei and Tammy Cook, other two friends friends of mine, but also recipe developers and things like that who, Mary worked for me at Bomb Biscuit Co. for a long, still does as a consultant. But it was just when I would write this down, I would say, "Hey, I want to make this, but I want it to make it to where I could give it to Ranita and my mom and she would not ask me a single question." And I said, "Okay, I got the middle rack here." And I said it out loud and I think it was Mary who said, "You probably want to write it in there."
Jessie Sheehan:
That's great.
Erika Council:
And I just took that and just went and tried to do everything that way.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love the idea of writing to a particular person because it does help keep you real and it helps keep it simple and making sure we don't get too chefy in our writing, just making assumptions about the people that are reading what we're writing.
Erika Council:
Right, for sure.
Jessie Sheehan:
I wondered about the oven temperature of 450. Is that particularly high for a biscuit or is that, do you guys use 450 across the board with all of the biscuits?
Erika Council:
For your home kitchen for sure, because you want it to be as hot as possible. So when it goes in there, they just, because the cook time is like 10 to 12 minutes, so you want that immense heat immediately where they kind of pop. At the restaurant, it's scaled down because those convection ovens are so hot, so they're like at 300, 350, but that's probably 450 at your house. But all the recipes that we cooked, and I wanted it to work in your traditional oven, so even if you didn't necessarily have a convection feature on your oven, because some of the best biscuits and pie that I have come out that brown oven with no window on the front.
And so I just know most of those were turned to 500 all the way to the end with a wooden spoon cracked on the side so it wasn't too hot. So I just knew that you wanted that oven to be really hot. And specifically for the ovens we tested on 450s, some of them were 425, depending on the nicer ovens, like a Wolf and stuff. But the 450 number was sort of the one across the board for all the ovens, even if they didn't have the convection feature.
Jessie Sheehan:
So now we're going to place some all-purpose flour, which is King Arthur for you. All-purpose flour, baking powder, kosher salt, and baking soda in a large bowl. And we're going to whisk. I already asked you about the addition of the baking soda, and you were just saying that is that extra insurance that this biscuit is going to rise.
Erika Council:
With the buttermilk.
Jessie Sheehan:
And you're going to get the tang if you have the soda where the tang might not be as bright if you're just using baking powder. And then the large bowl, I'm sure at the restaurant is probably large metal bowls, but is there a favorite biscuit bowl that you have? Do you like a Pyrex? Do you like metal?
Erika Council:
I love Pyrex at home, the glass Pyrex.
Jessie Sheehan:
Me too.
Erika Council:
I have some old school that I actually got at an estate sale, but the little blue with the little corn flour, the white bowl with the blue, so that's still Pyrex too. I love those bowls and the weird green color one, just because you can put them in a freezer and they're still so cold, but I just feel like they stay cold for a long time also, or they don't necessarily, even if it's hot in your kitchen, those bowls are still cold. But I love glass bowls at my house.
Jessie Sheehan:
Is there a type of whisk or a brand of whisk that you like? Are we using a balloon whisk right now? Is it more like a skinny whisk?
Erika Council:
It's more of a balloon whisk. It's almost like a French whisk, let's say. That's what the thinner, the goal is to incorporate the flour, the baking soda, baking powder, salt, so there's not big hunks of baking soda without having to get a sifter out and sift it because that's time-consuming. But you just want to get something even if you had a fork, you know what I mean? Just sort of make sure all those ingredients are well incorporated so no one bites into a pocket of baking soda because that has happened to me several times and it is not delightful, but it happens.
Jessie Sheehan:
You even tell us why we whisk. The whisking and drying ingredients, as you said, ensures the even distribution of the leaveners and salt, et cetera. And it also aerates the flour, adding air and making it fluffier so it'll be easier to mix with the wet ingredients-
Erika Council:
Yes.
Jessie Sheehan:
... you tell us and I love that. And now using our fingers or a pastry cutter or a fork, we're going to work in some cold shortening. And then I wondered out of those three things, what do you like? Do you use fingers? Do you use a pastry cutter or do you use fork?
Erika Council:
At home I use my fingers, but I typically have to put it back in the, well, the Crisco isn't too much, but I just run hot, so it starts to melt down. For me, I use my hands. My daughter likes to use a fork that works for her, but me I just use my hands.
Jessie Sheehan:
And we're going to work in the shortening, which is cold, and it's Crisco. And I wondered why, because assume we're going to be adding butter. Why both? What does the shortening give us that the butter doesn't give us? Because it's not a ton of shortening, but it's in here.
Erika Council:
For me, I've noticed that adding a little shortening keeps those biscuits sturdy versus just butter. Butter can sometimes be kind of heavy for something, depending on how they're putting it in and I just know that little addition of Crisco will keep that biscuit in place, sturdy. It just kind of has a more of a hold on it versus the butter that is going to help spread.
Jessie Sheehan:
I like to add a little bit of Crisco to cookies if I don't want to rest them or if I want to make them with melted butter so they're not even cold when they go in the oven. And the little bit of Crisco it's actually in the oatmeal cookie recipe that's on the container of Quaker Oats calls for shortening because it'll stop your cookies from spreading. So I bet that same idea works here. Just as you said, it kind of keeps them a little sturdier and a little more in shape.
We're working that Crisco into the flour mixture until only pea-sized pieces remain. I'm not sure which of your grandmothers said this, I think it might've been Geraldine, but there's a telltale sign of a good cook, which is the blue tub of Crisco on the back of the stove, which isn't even filled with Crisco anymore. It's filled with bacon grease.
Erika Council:
So if you walk into someone's house and that's sitting on the back and that's you know that they can cook and that is an absolutely correct assessment. I have never been in anyone's house who had that jar sitting on the back of the stove with bacon grease in it who couldn't throw down in the kitchen. It's just sort of this sort of that means that you learn from somebody who taught you how to cook because they did that. So yeah, that's true. And I have a ton of that because I cook a lot of bacon. My son could probably eat a pack of bacon a day. I don't cook him that but so there's a ton of that. But also, I love pork. I'm from North Carolina. It's just part of me. So I like to put bacon grease in my biscuits at home. I use that for everything, but yet that is a true statement, true assessment, especially in the South.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love it. I love it. I had this note too that bacon fat and lard are actually your favorite way to make biscuits. And I just wondered, is it like nostalgia or flavor or kind of a mixture of both of those things?
Erika Council:
It's probably a mixture of both because the pie crust for me also is just that nostalgia of the taste, that flavor, especially getting that lard from the pit masters with the smoke still on it, somewhat. There's just nothing that beats that, but obviously, we don't use that at the restaurant because people are pork-opposed now, which is fine.
Jessie Sheehan:
I'm pro-pork, just for the record. Now we're going to add our butter. So we're going to use the slicing side of our box grater, and we're going to slice the unsalted cold butter into our flour mixture. Why are we slicing rather than using the large holes on the grater is one of my questions. And then also, do you ever freeze the butter or is that overkill?
Erika Council:
To me, it's overkill. I feel like once you've grated the sheets of butter in there and tossed it in if you feel like it's starting to break down, just put the whole bowl back in the freezer for a few minutes to let it come back together. To me, freezing it I just think it adds more water into the butter, to me. And it's just when you-- by the time you've grated that down because it's frozen, you're struggling to grate it. It's starting to break down so quickly anyway, but it's also water now because depending on, for me, my freezer gets real cold.
For the slice sides, to me it adds sheets kind of like laminated dough. So you're getting these sheets of butter that kind of go into each layer of biscuits. So obviously when it's baking and it's pulling away, you're getting more of those sort of layers and flakes pull apart for me. And I think to me that getting the sheets that way. And it also helps for you not to break it down so much. I find when I was explaining to people to use the greater side to grate them in, it gave them smaller pieces of butter, so they were breaking too much of it into the flour versus the sheets. It's like, "Oh, I see it. I'm not going to, I'm just going to do a little bit."
Jessie Sheehan:
We're going to toss the sheets of butter into the flour mixture and lightly work the butter pieces between our fingers or we can use a pastry cutter to kind of break them up and coat them with flour. And we're going to stop when the dough resembles coarse sand but there's still some visible pieces of butter, which you just explained is a helpful sign for the home cook, or I'm sure for your employees, some of them who maybe haven't been making biscuits with you for a long time." And the pieces as you tell us, are really important because once they melt in the oven, the steam releases from them and that'll lift the biscuit, forming these tender, flaky layers. Now we're going to place our biscuit mixture in the bowl into the freezer for like 15 minutes. Again, you tell us why ensures the butter doesn't soften too much and that it only melts in the oven to create a layered effect as opposed to on our counter.
Erika Council:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
Then we're going to add our cold, full-fat buttermilk. Remind us the name of the brand you love. I know we won't be able to get it everywhere, but
Erika Council:
Banner Butter.
Jessie Sheehan:
Banner Butter, yeah. We're going to add that to our chilled flour mixture, stir. Are we stirring with a flexible spatula?
Erika Council:
Yeah, you can use a flexible spatula. Yeah, it is what I use. Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yep. And it's probably at the restaurant, it's the white heads with the red handles.
Erika Council:
Yes. Yes ma'am.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, I know them well. And then at home, you use whatever you want and you do that until the dough forms a ball. There are no dry bits of flour visible, dough will be shaggy and sticky. But this is a great tip to avoid adding too much of your buttermilk to your biscuits. You're going to start with half of what the recipe calls for and then gradually add the remaining amount until the dough. Again, I just love the way you write, but until the dough is almost the consistency of Silly Putty.
Erika Council:
Sorry.
Jessie Sheehan:
Which I love that so much. No, I love silly Putty. I haven't thought about Silly Putty since I was a kid, but I loved that. And you tell us why. If you add too much liquid to the dry ingredients, some recipes might say, well then just add some more flour, but that's not going to work. And you say instead if your biscuits are too wet, you grab your portion scoop, your ice cream scoop or a spoon and you make drop biscuits because those will work with a wetter dough. But do not try to add more flour to individual biscuits that you're cutting out. I thought that was so smart. So smart.
Erika Council:
And I learned that from the restaurant side of things, which has been fascinating to train other people how to make your biscuits. And I think when we were making just a hundred to three, 400 for a day or so, I was like, yeah, we'll just add some more flour. And then if they started doing, you had other people coming in trying to teach them, depending on the biscuits you got, it just tastes like flour because it had so much. So it was like, "Okay, so you need to pour half this buttermilk in here and just learn the consistency."
Not too long ago, a gentleman came and interviewed me about the biscuit process and he was so curious on how I teach how you make the biscuits. And what I do is I start from the end and then work to the beginning. So I start at the end of when we're rolling the biscuits out, folding them, and just so you know what that dough looks like when it hits that wood table and how it needs to feel for you to work it. And so we build from that and cutting the biscuits out from there to the second part of mixing the consistency so you see what it looks like with this amount of buttermilk in it before you put it onto the table. You haven't added the buttermilk yet. You're just looking at it to the point to where you get to where you're adding the buttermilk.
So starting from that end, they know what the consistency needs to feel like. It's easier to teach them the measurement side. Yeah, this is written down. You got your scale. We're doing 30 pounds of flour, that's set. But actually knowing what it's supposed to look like to adding more milk and things like that, what that should be because every flour batch is going to be different depending on if it's winter, if it's summer. So yeah, that's helped a lot.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that idea of it's so smart to teach from the finished product backwards. So before turning the biscuit dough out onto our work surface, we're going to sprinkle the surface with a little bit of bench flour. We're going to lightly dust the top of the dough with the flour and we'll flour our hands to keep the dough from sticking to them. And then I love this, you tell us to put a half cup of bench flour in a little container off to the side of our workstation because, and I do this all, I'm so guilty of this, if you keep the bag there and you keep sticking your hands in the bag when they get sticky, then all that little wet flour bits, you call it debris-
Erika Council:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
... they come from double dipping end up in the flour. And I'm so guilty of that. So I have to follow Erika and be smart about that. And now we're going to start the process of doing our letter folds. So with our floured hands, we're going to pat the dough into a quarter-inch thick rectangle. And is the long side closest to us at this point?
Erika Council:
Yes.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. Long side is closest to us. Then we're going to fold the ends of the rectangle toward the center, overlapping them one end on top of the other to create a, you call it a tri-fold. I call it a letter fold, but it's the same idea. Then we'll lightly dust the top of the dough with a flour and repeat that process of patting the dough into an 11 x 6 inch rectangle, quarter inch thick, and fold it into thirds again. Do we rotate it each time?
Erika Council:
I do. I didn't want it to make it too complicated for, because that can get kind of... So if you don't rotate, it's not the end of the world, but just-
Jessie Sheehan:
And then we're going to repeat this step for a third time, pat our dough this time to a half-inch thickness. And you say you can use a rolling pin for this process, but now we're going to cut out our biscuits. We're going to use a three and a half inch biscuit cutter, which is kind of big.
Erika Council:
When we were discussing the cookbook and what size they should be because they have to take those biscuits and put them at the end of the book with the sandwiches. So they were originally like two-and-a-half-inch-sized biscuits, and they're like, "No, we want to cut them, because then we want the people to get to the end of the book and oh, you can make a bacon, egg, and cheese using this size. So that's why.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, it's smart. I wrote that you can use a two-inch if you want, but I figured that that larger size is great for all of your sandwiches, and we're going to dip our biscuit cutter in the flour, and you tell us that's helpful before we press it into the dough to help the cutter from sticking to the dough. Also, this is like a biscuit tip that a lot of people know, but not everyone that flowering the cutter is also great because it prevents you from sealing the edges of the cut because people don't realize, but if they seal those edges, which happens, for instance, if you push down on the cutter and twist it, you'll seal the edges of the biscuit and then it hinders the biscuit from rising.
Erika Council:
Absolutely.
Jessie Sheehan:
So you have to go straight down and pull up. And I also loved learning that you actually sharpen your biscuit cutters and your bench scraper, which I thought was genius.
Erika Council:
After so many washes, it starts to go dull. And then I think a lot of things aren't pointed out when people are writing recipes or teaching people how to do things. Also, the biscuit cutter, after you've done quite a few, once the flour starts to stick around there, that's going to seal around your biscuits too. So you got to get that off. But yeah, the sharper around, and I know some of my baker ladies are like, well, they've learned now. They're like, "Well, God knows." They've learned now because even they sharpen it. But you slice that in there and it pulls it right out, and that's kind of like a knife almost.
Jessie Sheehan:
I thought that was so smart. So now we're going to place our biscuit rounds about an inch apart from each other on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Is there a brand of baking sheet? I'm sure it's restaurant supply at the restaurant, but do you like a rimmed baking sheet?
Erika Council:
They are rimmed baking sheets. The restaurant, they're all restaurant supply, but I like the ones that are kind of coat. They have a little coat on it at home.
Jessie Sheehan:
So we're going to, now we'll gather our scraps and we're going to pat the scraps out into a half-inch thickness and cut again. But we're not doing additional tri-folds.
Erika Council:
No, we're just going to cut because it is been worked so much and if you keep working it, that's why the biscuits start to do this little Leaning Tower of Pisa thing.
Jessie Sheehan:
Totally. So now we're going to discard the remaining scraps, or we can roll them into a snake, which I love. It's a way to eliminate waste. And we just bake the snake alongside the cut biscuits. And then is that like a chef's snack afterwards?
Erika Council:
Yeah, we used to eat it as a kid. Our granny would roll it in cinnamon and sugar. But you push it up against the biscuits so they are soft around the sides because if they're baked together, so you put the snake on the side. We do a thing called bonnet, so you could also deep-fry that biscuit dough, roll it in a ball too so you didn't waste it. But I would love that. I use it like a spoon to use for gravy.
Jessie Sheehan:
The snake? I love it so much.
Erika Council:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
I wonder, do you ever brush the biscuits with buttermilk or an egg wash or heavy cream or even milk? Brush the tops?
Erika Council:
I brush them with butter. Sometimes I put them in there, and obviously when they come out of the oven for some of our sort of specialty biscuits at the restaurant, we do the buttermilk. I never use an egg wash because my son's allergic to eggs and his favorite thing is biscuits. So I stopped, I never really sort of did that but egg wash is beautiful. It does a beautiful glaze on a biscuit, so if you're feeling fancy, I definitely don't discourage it. But yeah, we just sort of stick with butter. And we do use buttermilk to adhere things like the everything bagel seasonings and things like that. But just butter for the most part.
Jessie Sheehan:
And now we're going to bake for about 15 to 17 minutes. We'll rotate the pan once halfway through, which I love. I'm a rotator.
Erika Council:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
It's so interesting the people that don't rotate, I don't understand them.
Erika Council:
I don't either.
Jessie Sheehan:
Your ovens are so wonky in terms of what's the hot spot-
Erika Council:
So wonky, yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
... until the tops are golden brown, and then we will serve immediately.
Erika Council:
Yes.
Jessie Sheehan:
Well, thank you so much for chatting with me today, Erika, and I just want to say that you are my cherry pie.
Erika Council:
Oh, thank you. You're my cherry pie. Thanks for having me. This has been great.
Jessie Sheehan:
That's it for today's show. You can find today's recipe at cherrybombe.com. Thank you to California Prunes for supporting our show. Don't forget to follow She's My Cherry Pie on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen and tell your pals about us. She's My Cherry Pie is a production of The Cherry Bombe Podcast Network. Our producers are Kerry Diamond, Catherine Baker, and Jenna Sadhu. Thank you so much for listening to She's My Cherry Pie and happy baking.