Several weeks ago Chris, a Blind Pig reader, sent me the following question and asked that I share it with you. (Upper Peachtree is a community just down the road a ways from where I live)
I was raised in Upper Peachtree and now live in Florida. When I was growing up in U.P. my grampa made a butter milk biscuit bread it was thick like corn bread batter and he would just pour it in a pan or cast iron pan and bake it. I was wondering if you could put the question on your site and maybe some of the older people will or can remember how to make it. I have looked and looked on the internet and can’t seem to find how to make it. We had quite a few honey bee stands back then and I tell you what that hot bread with some honey and butter was something to talk about. My mom passed away in 2000 and I never got her to show me how to make it, you know them older folks hardly ever wrote a recipe down. I am as guilty as anyone, but it is a shame the younger people are not learning the way we and our parents and grandparents got by. I am currently learning how to can deer meat and some other stuff to put up. I used the recipe for sourkraut that you had on your site it turned out good but not as white, I think it is the water down here nothing like that good mountain water for canning.ThanksChris
- 2 teaspoon bacon drippings (or lard)
- 2 cups self rising flour
- 1/4 cup cold butter cut into cubes
- 1 1/2 to 2 cups buttermilk
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Add the bacon drippings or lard to a 8 inch cast iron frying pan and place pan in heating oven. Add butter to flour and cut it in until it resembles coarse crumbs.
Add buttermilk to flour mixture. The batter will be very moist but shouldn’t be runny. Pour batter into hot cast iron pan. Use a spatula or spoon to spread the dough evenly over the bottom of the pan.
Bake for 20 to 25 minutes or until the top is golden brown. Remove from oven and flip bread out onto a cooling rack or a plate-slice up or break off and serve.
Baking the dough in the piping hot frying pan gives the outside a wonderful chewy crust. The buttermilk adds a nice wang that goes perfect with butter and honey-which is how I ate mine.
I’m not sure this is the recipe that Chris is looking for-so if you’ve got a recipe that’s seems similar to the one Chris remembers Grampa making please share it with us!
Do you ever make biscuit bread instead of biscuits you cut out?
Tipper
My Grandmother who was born in the early 1900’s, used to make a certain kind of biscuit to “sop” cream with. We referred to it as “cream and biscuits”. You would pour some half and half onto your plate and then mix in a spoon of sugar. We would break open the biscuit and sop it in the cream before eating it… all with your hands of course. The outsides of the biscuit were chewy and the inside wasn’t light and fluffy, more so it was soft and thick. The biscuit itself was about 1 1/4 in thick.
Anyone have a recipe for something like that? The recipe was lost when my mom passed about 10 yrs ago.
I’ve made this bread so many times after watching you make it on your YT channel. Somehow I got the butter measurement wrong and was putting a whole stick but the 1/4 stick is much better. I also use 3/4 C whole milk mixed with 3/4 buttermilk and it is sooooooooo delicious! Thank you for sharing your recipes, your family and you home with us.
My Grand Mother would make her usual cut biscuit dough with “clabber milk” and occasionally instead of rolling it out would shape it in a round and bake it on a cookies sheet. She called it “Bustin Bread” because you busted it with your hands to get a serving. She lived in Macon County, N.C.
My wife and I enjoy watching your youtube videos, and are amazed at how similar your recipes, and stories are to the ones of our grandparents in Indiana where we grew up. God Bless you all.
My grandmother was from Coeburn,VA and she made biscuit bread for my grandfather’s dinner bucket when he worked in the mines. She would put any leftover meat from previous nights supper or bacon with it and her homemade apple butter.
Sounds just delicious.
Hi!
My Mom used to call what she made ‘Batter Bread’ and like others, I didn’t write anything down and didn’t pay close attention to what she was doing. What I do remember is her using flour and milk and an egg but I don’t remember butter. She probably used other ingredients but I don’t recall. She made it in an aluminum baking pan and it was crunchy on the bottom and around the edges but the inside texture was more like moist sourdough bread and delicious with butter! She said her ‘Poppy’ (her Dad) was the one who showed her how to make it. I’ve asked any relatives left who might know but they don’t remember either. For years my son and I have tried to figure it out. My Mom would say she was going to make a ‘pone of batter bread’.
I saw you demonstrate this recipe on your You Tube channel, looks absolutely delicious and so I am happy to find your recipe. My cast iron skillets are 10 inches. Would you bump up the recipe a bit or just bake a short time using this recipe?
Thank you,
Joann
Joann-I would just adjust the baking time 🙂 Hope you enjoy!
We call this biscuit bread but we use oil and sweet milk if we didn’t have buttermilk. The crust is delicious.
We had this bread often after a long day working in the tobacco fields ,Mama called it hoecake or some time sponge bread . If we dint have milk she used water flour drippings .it was so good with home made jelly .
We called it Hoe Cake even tho it was cooked in a skillet.
i’ve been looking for the recipe for what my granny made as well…no one has come up with it…the only things i remember specifically were flour and milk…she called it pone bread and could mix it up in a flash..it was really white, would often split on the top when it was baked and was really really fluffy…worked wonderfully for absorbing jam and honey…it didn’t taste anything like biscuits…so i know it wasn’t her biscuit dough.any help would be appreciated…
Pone bread is made like a corn bread
IBecky. I make it all the time. I don’t measure but can try to measure and leave a recipe for you. We call it biscuit bread. It’s just as you described. I use self rising flour, oil, buttermilk or sweet milk. Mix up until consistency is about like cake batter. Pour into cast iron skillet that has oil in bottom and heated to 450 degrees until hot. When you pour the batter in that hot grease it sizzles but makes the best crust.
This recipe is easy and soooo good! Thank you!
My grandmother use to make what she called sweet bread. I was just a child but I remember it being like biscuit bread but a little sweet. She would make it into a big round cake of bread. I have tried to find a receipt for it but have been unable to find one. It could have just been something she made up.
This is new to me but sure sounds worth a try. Love all the comments too!
Hi again Tipper,
My Grandmother used to make her bisquits like you were talking about. My Mother, who was very close to dads mom learned how to make them that way from her. I think they called them Hocakes or something like that. I remember grandmother making that type of bread that Chris is talking about but I was very young and never knew how she made it but it was good. She was very picky about her kitchen and would never let anyone help her cook but mom. She died 5 days before my birthday in 1969. Ironically, the only reason she went to the hospital was because Grandpa was sick(we thought he might die). Anyway, she had a cold and the only way grandpa would agree to go to the hospital was if she would agree to go get checked herself. She finally agreed so dad called the ambulance for grandpa, I helped grandma get in the ambulance and sit down beside grandpa and the ambulance left with them and we locked their house up and then went on to the hospital and time we got there, she had died. My dad passed out like a light when they came out and told him. I was sure they were coming to tell us grandpa had died because he seemed really bad when they picked him up. He lived 10 years after that. Turned out she had pneumonia.
Hi. This post is almost 10 years old. However I couldn’t pass it without expressing my condolences to you and your family. My heart just goes out to your dad too. I can’t imagine. Blessings to you and your family.
You are right, Tamela, this bread is definitely not for one who’s on a diet or watching their calories and carbs but it’s certainly worth it to have it occasionaly and every carb and calorie is sooooooo delicious and worth it to me! And thank you Ed, this bread with the fried eggs is so good, the bacon would make it even better so I will definitely be adding the bacon next time I make it!! Which will be soon….
We called this hoecake. Biscut dough with a little more milk added that was poured into a cast iron fry pan and baked.
So good to sop up tomotes covered with redeyed gravy.
This is my son’s favorite ‘biscuit’. I’ve always heard it called ‘cake bread’. It’s yummy!
Glynda P. Chambers is a genius! Now I know I’ve gotta try it.
You put in your bread.
You scramble your eggs and stir in a handful of bacon pieces.
You turn out your bread, regrease the pan and put in the eggs.
While the eggs cook, you split the bread.
When the eggs are almost done, you put the top half of the bread back in the pan, cut side down, then turn it out again on a plate, put the bottom half back on cut side down and cap the pan back on the whole thing.
The pan will keep the whole thing hot until it is ready to serve. Just bring it to the table and turn ’em loose on it.
I repeat. Glynda P. Chambers is a genius!
Sure looks good. Mama made the cathead type biscuits made out with her hands. They do have a different texture from rolled out biscuits & I don’t know anyone who can make them now. I remember her telling about being in bed sick or after having a baby & having her pan brought to the bed where she mixed & made out the biscuits. She had a bowl she kept in the lard stand that held the flour & that was the biscuit making bowl. We didn’t have any bought bread. I’m going to make us some biscuit bread–I’ll bet the crust is wonderful.
Tipper, I have been eating this and making this bread my whole life. We as kids called it Hoecake and my Mama made this all the time, I still continue to make it. I use a small black skillet, put some Oil in it, put it in the oven and get it really hot. Mix the S.R. flour( I also add about 1/2 tsp. baking powder, buttermilk and then pour in most of the hot oil. Mix all together pour into the hot pan then bake it in the over. My favorite way to eat it is to use the hot skillet after removing the bread, adding a very sm. amt. of oil and put in 3-4 eggs, fry until done and after slicing the bread across and separating put the eggs which will be the same size as the bread, split into 4 pieces and this is supper for us. So so good. I actually had this just last week.
Oooh! What a wonderful read (and challenge) for us carboholics!! 😉
I remember watching Mommy making drop biscuits for us in the mornings. She would mix up a batter then take a big spoonful and using another spoon, push it off onto the pan. We were a hungry bunch so she had to make 2 or 3 pans. Sometimes when she was running late or just tired of scooping, she would put the rest of her batter/dough in a pan and smooth it down with the back of her spoon. When she did it that way, she called it biscuit bread. If she had a recipe, I have no idea what it was. All I remember is how good her biscuits were.
Tipper,
I wonder if anyone ever had bologny
gravy. Mama would quarter those 1/4″
thick bologny sections, cook ’em on
top of our old wood stove while the
biscuits was baking in the oven. After
making a big panfull of gravy, she’d
put the blackened bologny pieces back
in and let it simmer a bit. We always
thought it was “pig ears”, and when
it hit the table there wasn’t much
talking going on. I had to sit on a
bench behind the table with some of
my older brothers and you’d better
not move or someone’d get your spot.
Such wonderful memories of a better
time…Ken
Tipper: I may share these wonderful notes with my grandson – who just ‘moved out’ and may be he will be eager to learn an ‘old way’ of making bread. He loves old things – even me!
Cheers,
Eva Nell
I make a lot of biscuits and biscuit bread too. Several things I think make it better are:
use either a cast iron skillet or a stainless steel pan (the aluminum pans are too thin and biscuits seem to get too brown on the bottom in a hot oven), get the oven really hot, about 450 degrees, use lots of real buttermilk, and I use real butter in my biscuits. I also bake with white whole wheat flour (2 cups flour, 2 tsp. baking powder, 1 tsp. baking soda, 1 tsp. salt) 5 tablespoons cold butter, and one cup or more buttermilk. The most important thing is bake often and your biscuits get better. My grandmother served them with a dish of molasses and butter stirred together with a fork. My mother-in-law served them with thickened blackberries. I usually have syrup or jam, but most anything is good. Grandchildren love them and always ask for them.
I, too, have Dabney’s wonderful book—a great read and wonderful recipes. Recommend it!
Looking forward to trying the recipe you gave us Tipper.
So how I love reading everyone’s memories….I, too remember my granny making this bread and eating it will honey that papa got from his own bee hives…
Brenda
Mama’s Biscuits were made “Till they looked right”
by Garland Davis
Any baker will tell you that the secret to fluffy tender biscuits lies in the ingredients, temperatures and mixing procedures. Only chilled shortening or butter or a combination of the two should be used. Flour, baking powder, and salt must be meticulously measured and sifted together. The chilled butter and/or shortening should be cut in until the mixture resembles coarse cornmeal. The chilled liquid, milk or buttermilk, should be added and the dough mixed only until it is formed. Do not over mix. The resulting mixture should be placed in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes. After chilling, move the dough to a floured board and roll or pat to the desired thickness. Bake.
All that being said, I watched my Mama make biscuits many times. She would put the flour into the sifter (no measuring cup or scale) and sift into her mixing bowl. She would then add baking powder with a soup spoon and salt by pouring some into her hand from the Morton salt container. She then reached into the lard bucket and got a handful of lard and worked it into the flour mixture. She added the liquid and “worked the hell out of it.” Instead of rolling and cutting her bicscuits, she would squeeze a portion of dough between her thumb and forefinger, shape it, and place it on a greased biscuit pan. This made a biscuit with a tough crust and a chewy interior.
My Uncle Frank once said that his Mama, my Granny Davis, made biscuits that wouldn’t fall apart when you drug them through a plate of gravy or ‘lasses. I remember him pouring about a half cup of molasses onto a plate and grabbing four biscuits and making a breakfast of it.
Our hoecake was always corn bread “baked” on top of the stove in a cast iron skillet with a lid. I sure wish I could sit with my Mother and have a hot piece of her hoecake with butter on it. Nothin’ better. She made one everyday or two.The old one was always crumbled into beans or buttermilk.
I might just have to try your recipe. I like the bacon grease part best. And the crust!! You see I am a dedicated crust fan (no not a crusty old man.) I have been known to bake a can of of them Grands (imitation biscuits,) split them open, rip out all that doughy white stuff and replace it with a mater or apple butter or sausage or crispy fried bologny or jelly or jam or fried eggs and bacon or scrambled eggs and cheese or something. I know that’s cheating but I can’t make a good biscuit. I need a hammer and chisel to open them up. My wife makes good biscuits but they fall apart.
I think that canola oil stuff comes from a place up in Canada. They say it comes from plant but I think they pump it out of the ground. They put it in tank cars which erupt into flames whenever they cross the border into the U.S.
I bet your biscuit bread would be great crumbled in a bowl and soaked with strawberry juice. You couldn’t let it set too long lest the crust lose too much of its crunch.
My recipe is very similar to the one above.
2 cup self-rising flour
1/3 cup lard or Crisco
1 to 1 1/2 cup of buttermilk
Preheat oven to 425. Grease your pan and set it in the oven to get hot. Mix lard with flour then add buttermilk. Pour batter into pan and bake 20 to 25 minutes or til done.
I pretty much always make biscuits. If I’m in a hurry though and don’t want to fool with patting them out, I just make biscuit bread.
Oh my, that is the bread commonly cooked by my family, and always mixed with buttermilk. Mom mixed up self-rising flour with buttermilk and dumped it into a heated greased sheet pan with dots of butter on top to melt and brown as it cooked. My sis cooks a thin bread like this on a pizza pan. Mostly I fry on top of stove in small cast iron pan, and is it ever good with fried apples. I have heard it called batter bread, hoe cake, and a friend in Kansas called it squaw bread. I’ve eaten it cooked every kind of way, and I have never ate a bad batch. Yours looked delicious, Tipper.
Yeah, my dad made biscuit bread, it was a special treat! But I do remember it was made if you were in a hurry cause you could have in in the oven in no time. Might add a dash of salt to that recipe. We also ate this with chocolate gravy! Yum! Something I found interesting, Dad’s family came from England & this recipe is really close to Yorkshire Pudding, especially the smoking hot greased skillet. Beth in Ky
Tipper,
My sister-in-law calls that bread a hoe-cake!
I was going to make some quick Cat head biscuits. In the cast iron skillet on top of the stove, I was using my regular biscuit recipe, only thinner and dropping them by large tablespoonfuls into the hot greased skillet. I just dropped them a circle and one in the middle, til I used up all the sticky dough! LOL
I was just going to bake them quick on top of the stove, like “camping pan biscuits”….Well, those things spread, fluffed up and went together, so I turned the oven on and popped them in. There was barely a seam where the biscuits were dropped together..That pone just flipped out on the plate, much like the one you have pictured. Crusty, good! They were so good and you could just break off a piece or slice off a pie piece. I have made them that way since! I was using skim milk but buttermilk would make them fluff and taste a lot better…
Does’nt Pap make a skillet of bread much like this one. Only using sugar and egg too.
I also have put eggs in my biscuits!
Thanks Tipper, and Chris for reminding uf of this recipe!
PS..Ken, my Dad said his mother made “dodgers”…I never ever got how she made them or the ingredients…I always thought they were just big biscuits, baked on the pan…There were 5 hefty boys in the family so they took half a rack of bacon and a couple a dozen eggs as well for breakfast my Dad said!
My Grandmother made hoe cake bread like this ,It was just biscuits dough made in a cake .
Hoecake or Biscuit Bread was made in the Dyer house in Choestoe when the cook didn’t have time to “make out”–shape–the biscuit dough into biscuits. It was basically the regular biscuit recipe. Back then, we didn’t have self-rising flour. In fact, we had our own wheat we took to the “wheat-grinding mill” to have ground into flour. (We also had rye grain ground, so we could make rye-bread dodger). So baking soda, salt and baking powder had to be added in the “guesstimate” amounts so the bread would rise. Even better than having it baked in our Home Comfort wood stove was having it baked in the iron dutch oven at the fireplace, with coals underneath the three-legged oven and onto the iron lead cover on top of it. I can remember coming from school on a cold winter afternoon, after 3 p. m., and Mother having the biscuit bread just ready to come out of the dutch oven. We kids would then have a real treat: Hot biscuit bread from the Dutch oven with churned butter and sorghum syrup (which was also a staple around our house)–made for our family and all the families who grew ribbon cane. My Dad was the champion sorghum syrup maker in the community! If any of you still have one of the old iron dutch ovens and a fireplace, you might try making Tipper’s recipe and cooking it in the way I’ve described here. Good eating, indeed!
I make this often but I was raised calling it “Batter Bread” since you make it into more of a batter than you do biscuit dough. I also make it on a small biscuit tin as well as a cast iron pan, both are good but on the tin you get a very crusty edge that is great. (spray the tin with Pam). If you really want great biscuit bread make it in a Dutch Oven on a camp fire deep in the woods and eat it with “Speckled Trout” fried crispy and any other camp food you prefer. Your recipe sounds good but I use canola oil in my batter as well as in the cast iron pan, it’s supposedly healthier.
I finally see someone else that called it ‘Batter bread’!
Tipper, Oh what a true story came to mind about biscuits bread mother called it batter bread.I was four years old but remember it like it was yesterday Mother was so sick and she called me to her bed and told me I was to help Dad make breakfast so I got me a chair and stood beside him at the old country cook stove. He had a good fire in the stove ready to bake our bread. He got his flour sifted and lard in and he had a boiling pot of water and he poured this over the flour mix and I said , ” Daddy, Mama don’t do it this way.”
He said,” Who’s doing this Moo me or you?” So I let it happen with no more mama didn’t do it this way. He had a mix and tried to stir this glunck he finally spread it in a greased pan. I made the gravy and scrambled me an egg, he fried his eggs. This was the lumpiest bread I ever eat but the best when I got the lumps chewed up.
Looks yummy, I’ll have to try this. My mom made a loaf bread without yeast, as she was allergic to yeast. The closest thing I can find to it is a soda bread. Any other ideas? This is the group that ought’a know!
Tipper–I am fairly confident that any regular recipe for buttermilk biscuits, and there are scads of them, will work equally well for biscuit bread. The only basic difference, at least the way both Grandma Minnie and Momma approached matters, is that you cook biscuit bread in a cast iron pan (although Momma sometimes used a flat baking pan) and don’t bother to cut the biscuits. In other words, the dough is the same.
Here’s a recipe for Bryson City Cathead Biscuits from Joeseph Dabney’s wonderful book, “Smokehouse Ham, Spoon Bread, & Scuppernong Wine: The Folklore and Art of Southern Appalachian Cooking.” Incidentally, if your readers don’t have a copy they are missing not only scrumptious food but a world of interesting reading.
Dabney got this recipe from a Winchester woman who lived in Bryson City and regularly gave old-time cooking demonstrations at the Oconaluftee Visitor Center in the Park.
2 1/4 cups flour
1/3 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons baking powder
5 tablespoons lard
1 cup buttermilk
Sift and mix dry ingredients and then blend with lard. Add buttermilk and mix. Bake at 475 to 500 degrees until golden brown. Interestingly, and this is something someone who is familiar with wood stove cookery will have to answer, the temperature if cooked in a wood stove oven is 350 degrees.
Jim Casada
http://www.jimcasadaoutdoors.com
Yummy! What a wonderful way to start the day – I can smell the aroma. I really enjoy biscuits with honey as well as just about any kind of freshly baked bread. This just makes me want to bake some.
Tipper,
I remember this kind of bread that my
mama fixed sometimes. She called it a
“dodger” and we just broke off what
we wanted. Back then we had hogs and
a milk cow so Lard or bacon grease
wasn’t a problem, or buttermilk. I
sometimes helped with the churning to
get butter and buttermilk. And we kept our milk in the Spring, didn’t have a refrigerator then. Sounds like your receipe is about right.
This brings back nice memories…Ken
My mother use to make biscuit bread. It was always good with homemade jams, jelly or honey. I have no idea how she made it but it was made when she was too busy to make biscuits. Now, you done went and made me hungry!
This reminds me of my mother’s hoecake. She didn’t use cornmeal in her hoecake, just flour, drippings, shortening, and buttermilk. It was glorious. Thanks for sharing. I may try this myself. Seems like I couldn’t possibly mess this up.
I never had biscuit bread, but it looks great. I will be trying it out soon.
That looks wonderful! No, I’ve never heard of it but you can bet I’m gonna try it!
this kind of sounds and looks like bread that I fry on top of the stove. Everybody loves it.
now whir am i gonna find a mater two fit in that thair peece uv biskit. wreckin yu cud take a snuf glas an cut a rownd peece sos yer mater aint hangin out sew much
Yours looks yummy Tipper, thanks for bringing this up Chris. I have never had the bread, but I know I am going to enjoy eating it and am trying any recipe that gets submitted.
We had this often when I was growing up in East TN. The recipe that my Mother used was just her regular biscuit dough but it didn’t have to be shaped in to Biscuits. She taught me to bake it by giving me instructions from her bed where she was confined after being diagnosed with breast Cancer.
Sounds and looks like good biscuit-bread. I think the key to baking might be that cast iron skillet (just like with good cornbread). Our family also makes “Flour Bread” in a skillet on the stove top or campfire. It is a big biscuit, pressed thin, and cooked slowly in a seasoned skillet. Looks like your same recipe, but thinner and perfect for camping. (I know what we are having with supper.)