Not bad for a Yankee

Biscuits are the easiest thing in the world to make and among the hardest to make well. To achieve the perfectly, ethereally fluffy, flaky, crusty, buttery texture takes skill, patience and above all else a light hand.

I'm not purporting that I have personally reached biscuit nirvana, but at least I'm having fun trying.

I've been using the Alton Brown recipe as a baseline, but you know as well as I do that I don't follow instructions very well. Oh, I swap things out here and there, just sort of wing it now and then.

Saturday morning, no bread in the house but more preserves than you can shake a stick at, biscuits were the order of the day. Everything in stock except ... no buttermilk. And I don't enter a grocery store until I've had my coffee. So lessee ... a dribble of 2% and some Greek yogurt. That's sort of like buttermilk, right?

I tell you what, it was good enough for government work. The biscuits maybe didn't rise as much as I'd hoped (I think our baking powder may be losing its oomph), but the biscuits came out soft and fluffy, with a satisfyingly crunchy crust.

Not bad for a Yankee.