Makin' biscuits

Last week, a group of us went to Gina's belated birthday party, which was a cooking class in which the fine folks at A Southern Season taught us to make two types of biscuits. Under their tutelage, we split into groups and worked our dough and put our biscuits into their ovens.

This was an entirely new experience for me.

I don't bake. Never have. I love fresh-baked breads and pies and cakes and biscuits and so on, but if I'm going to cook it, I want a flame involved. Put me in front of a grill or a burner, and I'm happy. The oven, though, has always seemed so distant and the baking process so scientific and so devoid of art that I've chosen to stick with my flames.

Boy, was I wrong about baking.

Though each of us got to enjoy pre-measured ingredients and to share the work, I quite enjoyed the process. I also learned something interesting: no two sets of biscuits tasted the same. We all started with the same ingredients. We were all following the same two recipes. We had teachers who were suggesting the same techniques. Despite all those similarities, the biscuits had very distinct flavors.

I guess there's a lot more art involved than I had realized. I'm now having to reconsider baking.