Turning over the controls to Jasper and Tyler

as the 16- and almost 16-year-olds celebrate biscuits! We had our biscuit-making tutorial yesterday to the strains of Mozart’s wind instrument concertos, in between talk of a class lobbying trip to Washington (Tyler), musical endeavors (Jasper) and Frank O’Hara’s Lunch Poems. Their own effort (“Poetry always has crazy indentations!”) followed by their recipe.

ode to biscuits

o, sweet (or rather 

unsweet) biscuit

of leaf-lard and table-salt

butter-milk 

and self-

       rising flour

forgiving, 

finagling,

ferocious and

fresh

let rest

then rise 

o, biscuit 

eternally biscuatious

jasper zimmerman, tyler levan, 2022

Recipe:

Ingredients: 

• 4 cups self-rising flour, plus more for the work surface
• 1 tsp salt
• Pinch of sugar
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 2 tbsp baking powder
• ¾ pound (3 sticks) salted butter, cold, cut into ½-inch pieces pieces or grated
• 3 butter sticks or 2 butter sticks and half a cup of lard

To make self-rising flour, mix

• 4 cups flour
• 2 tablespoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda

Mix ingredients in a bowl. Use a pastry cutter to turn mixture into a consistency between the size of cornmeal and peas. Add the buttermilk. Mix with a large fork. Let the dough rest for 30 minutes. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

After 30 minutes, put some flour on a cutting board, and plop dough on it. Coat the baking sheet with flour. Roll the dough out to ¼ inch thickness. Then, use a Mason jar or a cookie cutter to make biscuits. Finagle the biscuits out if they’re stuck in the jar. Put them on a baking sheet, and put the sheets in the oven for 15 to 20 minutes. Let cool, and spread butter and jam on the biscuits. Enjoy!