I live in the US South; I am aware that biscuits come in many styles and types, and that everyone’s granny had the best ever recipe. A book about a bunch of different things you can do with biscuits makes sense. The one thing is though that there are about 60 pages of what’s nearly the exact same recipe, just switching out the fat (whole milk, sour cream, yogurt, duck fat, vegetable shortening, cream, lard, mayo). This section is basically repeating the recipe “2-ish cups of flour, 1 tablespoon baking powder, 2 teaspoons salt, 1 cup buttermilk, ½ cup other fat”. Now it’s only the one section, but the redundancy started to get to me a little.
A sweet section and a savory section, I get. A spreads section, and a breakfast/brunch biscuit (basically, sandwiches) section likewise. I actually kind of want to try Cheerwine mustard and hominy honey butter (not together though; that’d be awful); also maybe the friend green tomato biscuit sandwich. It also makes sense to me that pretzel biscuits, butter swim biscuits, and gluten free biscuits might need their own pages. These are not completely standard content or preparation-wise. The “diy Bisquick with just enough uses noted to use a batch” (note: this is not the actual title, I definitely paraphrased that) section looks interesting as well, although given that the three uses are pancakes, 7 UP biscuits, and cola biscuits, that I might be a little tempted to skip, especially since I’ve already got a really good soup biscuit recipe that involves that brand name mix.
This is one of those books that’s more of a personal narrative or memoir with a lot of recipes, than it is actually a cookbook. The history and personal connection is fine; the writing is also fine. But if you present yourself as a baking cookbook, then maybe we focus a little more on that? To be fair, the subtitle does say “A Love Letter to the Southern Biscuit with Over 70 Sweet and Savory Recipes”, but even this leans towards suggesting that this will be a book of mostly recipes. A lot of the history and experiences documented are actually interesting, but if that’s not what you go in expecting, you’re likely going to miss/skim the history and meaning.