It all started in London. In London, there were no biscuits.  I’d eaten biscuits all my life and always enjoyed them, but I had never before constructed elaborate daydream scenarios about cornering one in a dark alley and mercilessly chomping my teeth through its soft, fluffy heart. And Londoners always talked about biscuits—they ate them with tea and after dinner, they sold them at every corner store.  But their so-called biscuits were sweetish wafer-like cookies (this was incidentally, before I came to love the digestive, to keep a roll of chocolate McVities in my sock drawer) which would’ve gone pathetically limp under a heap of sausage gravy.

(Tangentially, [I’m careening more closely toward excessive DFW-style parenthetical notes—have you noticed?] this reminds me of a café, near my dorm, that served “American Style” chocolate chip cookies.  Only, instead of being mixed into the batter, the chocolate chips were placed on top, all their tips pointing neatly skyward.  It always made me laugh, but at least with the cookie they’d given it a shot.  The poor biscuit never had a chance.)

The problem for the American style biscuit, the fluffy round of light, buttery, floury, warm breakfast goodness, is that the British English language has no capacity for it.  It isn’t a traditional biscuit (as in tea cookie) and, while it is scone-like–it is more intentionally shaped, less crisp at the edges–it isn’t a scone.  Or a roll.  Or a bun.  It’s a biscuit, a Southern biscuit.  And when I was suddenly forced to live without it, I began to understand that my food pyramid was missing its point.  In a flash of genius, it occurred to me that a local Kentucky Fried Chicken was the obvious solution.  Their biscuits weren’t amazing, but they specialized in fried chicken—they couldn’t not serve biscuits.  Oh how naïve I was.  When I told my mom my biscuit sob story, she didn’t believe me.  ”Don’t they serve breakfast at McDonald’s, Mandy?”  Yes, of course they do.  ”So get a biscuit there.”  They don’t have them.  ”I mean at breakfast.”  Mom, they don’t have them.  ”But…how do they serve breakfast?”

Canada, with its Commonwealth allegiance, is no friendlier to the biscuit.  So, like any resourceful young lady, I’ve pulled myself up by my Appalachian bootstraps embarked on a journey toward the day when I pull the perfect Southern biscuit from my oven.

Biscuits are the slippery fish of the quick breads and, as my mother warned me, making a good biscuit (go ahead and forget about a great biscuit) isn\’t as easy as following the directions.  It wasn’t that the biscuits weren’t edible (they were) or that they weren’t buttery and flaky and white, but that they needed a little lightness, a little lift.

And what I’ve learned is that the qualifier “Southern” is an important one.  Southern-style biscuits are made in the South because that’s where the best biscuit wheat grows.  White Lily flour just isn’t sold at the Vancouver Safeway.

A perfect biscuit is a paradox: a white summer cloud and a warm winter blanket.  At once dense and feather-light, it is equally at home in sweet (note apple butter jar) and savory (note gravy) settings.  It’s friendly with the egg and the chicken.

Even though I haven’t reached biscuit nirvana, at least I’ve narrowed it down.  At this point, it’s either the lack of sifting, the amount of baking powder, the kind of milk, the protein content of the flour, the temperature of the butter, or the recipe itself.

If you were a biscuit doctor, I’d offer mine up for prescription.  But, unfortunately, we ate the evidence.  Start keeping an eye out, though, for your invitation.  Because when I get this right, you’d better bring your bib.