Biscuits. Just Biscuits.

I grew up on Bisquick biscuits. In hindsight, I think there should be a law against them. I graduated to Grands (canned biscuits by Pillsbury) I think sometime in the 90s. My brother still uses them. Grands leave nasty grease marks on the cookie sheet and dissolve in your mouth. You could eat 63 of them and not feel full, which is probably the point, right? And they're comparatively expensive.

Making your own biscuits isn't hard. Just remember: people who couldn't read or write or add and subtract -- who could hardly talk credibly -- got up and made biscuits without fancy stoves or Danish butter every morning of their lives. Really. And, in parts of the country where it's still 1957, or 1937 even -- like where I live -- they still do.

So here we go.

All you need is:

2 cups flour (I use King Arthur unbleached white bread flour )

1TBSP baking powder

1 tsp salt

6 TBSP softened butter, Crisco, or any solid fat EXCEPT spreadable margarines

1 cup, more or less, buttermilk, spoiled milk, plain milk (milk of any sort)

Utensils: Oven, big bowl, measuring cups and spoons, knife, hands.

Measure out the milk into a measuring cup. Set aside. Pour about 1/4 cup flour on the surface you'll use to knead and cut out the biscuits.

In the big bowl, mix flour, salt, and baking powder. Do yourself a favor and ONLY use Rumford or other non-aluminum-based powders. There may possibly be a link between the ingestion of aluminum and Alzheimer's, and many baking powders are aluminum-based.

With your hands, rub the fat into the dry materials. Don't overdo this. When you look at the flour, you should still be able to see some pieces: not chunks, but pieces. In the picture, here, you can see what that should look like.

Add the milk all at once and mix with your hands until all the flour is incorporated and the dough forms a ball. If the dough sticks to your hands, dust with a little flour until the dough forms up. If the dough is dry and won't pick up all the flour in the bowl, splash in a little extra milk. Just a little at a time.

On the floured surface, knead (only the kneading part of this video) the dough just two or three times. To knead, press the dough with the heels of your hands, rotate 90 degrees, fold top down over, do it again, rotate, fold, etc.

Pat the dough out into an even, flat disk or amoeba shape. Doesn't matter if the edges are regular since you're cutting those off anyway. The thickness of the dough is up to you; the thicker the dough, the fewer -- but the taller -- the biscuits. Biscuits should about double in thickness when they're cooked.

You can wash your hands now.

Lightly grease (spray-grease or pass over it with a little butter or Crisco) a cookie sheet or pizza stone. I use the latter because I have a Neanderthal oven and using the stone means the bottoms of the biscuits don't burn. It also evens out the temp in the oven. But a cookie sheet is just fine.

Square off your dough by removing the edge strips with a knife and cut in even-ish squares. Place the biscuits on the cookie sheet.

Collect the edges into a ball, pat out, square off, cut up, and repeat until you don't have enough of the edges to make a biscuit. Roll this into a ball and place on the cookie sheet.

Now, pre-heat the oven to 425. Don't do it before now, since this allows the biscuits to rest and rise a little before being cooked. Anyway, that's what I imagine is happening in their tender little bodies.

When the oven's heated, bake the biscuits. Set the timer for 11 minutes, and then keep checking. The biscuits are done when the tops are golden brown -- you know the color a biscuit should be: that color.

Sometimes I dust the top of the cooked biscuits with salt. Other people rub the tops with butter. Whatever works. Serve with more butter and jam. This is my own peach jam, which tastes awesome because this year's peaches tasted better than any year I can remember.

There you go.