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Baking is All in The Hands: Buttermilk-Biscuit Shortcakes

My mother and I had a joke that whatever gene makes a baker skipped her generation. I think the closest she ever came to baking was spearing bright orange peanut-shaped marshmallows on a carving fork and toasting them over the stove. When I married — I was 19 and a college junior — the only culinary experience I could claim was burning down my parents’ kitchen seven years earlier, a misadventure involving frozen fries and boiling oil.

Marriage (and a budget constrained by student loans) made me a cook; my mother-in-law inadvertently made me a baker.
She was a funny, spirited woman who was guarded, cool and singularly unsentimental, except when she talked about her parents, both bakers by trade. Her expression would soften as she remembered the warm cinnamon buns that waited for her after school. Watching her mime the motions of spreading sweet butter on a freshly baked poppy-seed roll — every bit of the roll’s surface had to be covered — was like hearing her declare: My family loved me!
Could baking really do that? If it could, I wanted to bake.

The galvanizing experience, the one that sent me into the kitchen, occurred the evening I dropped by my mother-in-law’s house in Brooklyn. I found her whistling and making knishes, those potato pies I’d have sworn only machines could produce. I barely had time to take off my coat before she pushed the dough toward me. “Touch it,” she said, “Feel how silky it is — this is how it should feel.”

I’d never touched dough before then, or even seen anyone bake. But something about my mother-in-law’s almost childish delight in what she had made, and the way she looked at me when she placed the dough in my hands, stayed with me.

She gave me the recipe, and on the way home, I bought flour. I found a little counter space in our made-for-gnomes kitchen and set to work. The last instructions my mother-in-law gave me were my mantra: If the dough is dry, add more oil; if it’s wet, add more flour. And so I added more oil and added more flour and added more and more until I had a mountain of dough that was as rough as a horse blanket. I went to bed knishless.

Had I been more experienced, more attuned to the language of baking, I might have understood that everything I needed to know about that dough was in my hands. Had I held more dough, I would have known to cup my hands around it, to rub my thumbs against the surface, heft the ball, sink my fingers into it, tug at it to discover if it stretched, if it sprang back, if it was airy or tight. But my hands didn’t know enough then. Today they’re my trustiest tool.

I lift pie crust from the counter on my palms, fit it into the pan and then flute the edges with my fingers. I shape bread dough into loaves by hand. Using every part of my hands, I coax a thin sponge cake into a jelly roll (and there isn’t a time when I don’t take a moment to admire the chubby spiral I’ve crafted). Crescent cookies are formed with my fingers, not perfectly, not evenly, but with pleasure — a pleasure similar to the one I feel when I twist puff pastry into long curlicues or pleat it to make elephant-ear cookies.

Baking is handwork, and for me, all that is joyful, comforting, gratifying and even magical about this work is packed into the simple act of making biscuits. I practice a kind of meditation while I make them. I concentrate on how each step feels — not so much because it makes a better biscuit (which it does) or because it’s more satisfying (which it is), but because I like having my senses on high alert, anticipating and responding to the dough’s changes. With apron on and sleeves rolled high (biscuits are a messy business), I dig my hands into the flour and butter and mash, squeeze, smoosh and press the ingredients together, watching the cold butter jump from my fingers at first and then feeling it yield as it warms and softens and I fall into the rhythm of it. I love how the dough is lumpy, how I find chunks of butter here, shards there, and how the higgledy-piggledy mixture teeters toward hopelessness until I reach into the bowl again to knead and fold it. And when, under my hands, the misshapen nuggets become the dough they’re meant to be, I’m still always surprised.

By the time I pry open the baked biscuits, cover them with strawberries — some gently cooked into jam, some fresh and glistening with sugar — and top it all with whipped cream, my handprints are baked into them. So are a large measure of joy and a small pinch of hope: Maybe what I’ve baked will linger in someone’s memory; and maybe, just maybe, it will make a new baker.

This story and recipe appeared in The New York Times Magazine.  It was my first On Dessert column. The photograph is by Gentl & Hyers and the food styling by Maggie Ruggerio.

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BUTTERMILK-BISCUIT SHORTCAKES

FOR THE SAUCY BERRIES:
1 hibiscus tea bag (like Red Zinger)
⅓ cup (80 ml.) boiling water
2 tablespoons sugar
1 fat strip orange, lemon or lime zest
1 pound (about 25) strawberries, hulled and coarsely chopped

FOR THE BISCUITS:
3 tablespoons sugar
Finely grated zest of 1 orange, lemon or lime
2 cups (272 grams) all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
½ teaspoon fine sea salt
¼ teaspoon baking soda
6 tablespoons (85 grams) very cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
¾ cup cold buttermilk

FOR THE TOPPING:
1 pound (about 25) strawberries, hulled and halved from top to bottom
1 tablespoon sugar
1 cup (240 ml.) heavy cream
2 tablespoons confectioners’ sugar
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

PREPARATION
Make the saucy berries: Steep the tea bag in boiling water for 5 minutes; pour the tea into a medium pot. Mix in the sugar, zest and berries, and cook, stirring, until the syrup bubbles exuberantly and the berries soften, about 5 minutes. Scrape into a bowl, discard zest and let cool while you make the biscuits.

Make the biscuits: Heat the oven to 400, and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
Put the sugar and zest in a large bowl, and rub them between your fingertips until the sugar is moist and aromatic. Add the dry ingredients, and stir with a fork to blend. Drop in the butter, toss it around with your fingers until it’s coated with flour and then press and pinch until you’ve got pea-size pieces of butter and flakes like oatmeal. Make a well in the center, pour in the cold buttermilk and turn and stir with a fork until the dough forms moist curds and clumps. Some dry crumbs may remain in the bottom of the bowl — don’t fuss with them now. Reach in with your hands, and knead gently, folding the dough on itself about 8 times, until it forms a ball.

Dust the counter lightly with flour, turn out the dough, dust the top and roll to a scant 1/2-inch thick. (Size and shape don’t matter.) Using a 2-to-2 1/2-inch biscuit or other cutter, cut rounds as close to one another as possible. Cut in a quick up-and-down movement — if you twist the cutter, you’ll impede the biscuits’ rise and their flakiness. Arrange 2 inches apart on the baking sheet. Gather the scraps together, reroll and cut more biscuits, knowing that these scrappers may not rise as high as those in the first round.

Bake the biscuits for 16-18 minutes, or until they’re tall and golden; transfer to a cooling rack. Use the biscuits when they’re warm or at room temperature.

Make the topping: Toss the berries and sugar together; leave on the counter, stirring now and then, while you whip the cream. Using a mixer, beat the cream just until it begins to thicken, then whip in the confectioners’ sugar and vanilla. Don’t overbeat — soft cream is good here.

To assemble: Pull apart each biscuit along a natural flake line, and place the bottoms on plates. Top each with a spoonful of saucy berries, cream and then sugared berries. Decide what to do with the other half of each biscuit: Lean it up against the shortcake; place it at a jaunty angle on top of each shortcake; make another shortcake with it; or tuck it away to toast in the morning.