The muffin method has many virtues, chief among them that it's very fast and can be done — and is indeed better done — without the use of a machine. It's my belief that machine mixing is the chief cause of the inferior muffins mass producers churn out, and why so many bigger bakeries (when they don't use mixes) employ the creaming method, which results in cupcake-like muffins instead of the real thing. Here we have large bowl A, which contains our dry ingredients, thoroughly sifted and blended so as to evenly distribute the leavening (you can use a whisk or even a food processor if you want to get really obsessive).

Next we have medium bowl B, containing all my miscellaneous wet ingredients, including sugar, whisked together. Why is sugar considered a "wet" ingredient in the baking world? Because it dissolves so quickly in anything watery. Here I should emphasize that all your wet ingredients MUST be at room temperature. All of them. Got that? All. Of. Them. Room temperature. The lot.

Now then, spatula in hand, we apply bowl B to bowl A.

And begin to fold, gently, scraping from the bottom and flipping over the top...lightly. The trick here is to fold only as much as it takes to moisten all the dry ingredients and no more. For this double batch of muffins I folded for about 45 seconds, until there were no more large pockets of flour to be found.

Here you can see there are a few small areas of unmixed flour, right around the edges. This is the time to stop folding:

With the mix more or less blended, now's the time to add any other items to your muffin (or pancake or quick bread) batter, in this case blueberries. Fold them in only to the point they are evenly distributed, no more.

Fill your molds with batter and bake.

That was pretty darn easy, wasn't it? For an indication of how well you've mixed, pay attention to the behavior of your leftover batter as you wash out your bowl. If the muffin or quick bread batter simply dissolves in the faucet stream, you've got a superior product to look forward to. If it puts up a fight or leaves slick, stringy and/or rubbery deposits on your wash cloth or sponge, you'll want to ease up on elbow grease next time, killer.

How did I do on these? A near perfect muffin crumb, irregular holes with a few large ones (indicating a slightly uneven mix of leavening), but no "tunnels" caused by gluten formation. I think I'll put the kettle on.

"Overmixing" is a term that's generally applied to batters versus doughs. It means that the mixture has been agitated to the point that the gluten in the flour has been developed. Most often it's pancake batters and muffin batters (things made via the muffin method) that are said to be overmixed, though cookie and cake batters can be overmixed, so can biscuit doughs, though I always think of that as "over-kneading". Call me a hair-splitter, I won't deny it.

What are the telltale signs of overmixing? For virtually all types of baked goods, know an overmixed product by its tough texture, the result of stretchy, developed gluten. Where muffins are concerned, overly large and/or long holes, or "tunnels", are one of the telltale signs. The reason, because developed gluten networks trap and hold expanding steam. Where there is little developed gluten, much of the steam produced by a baking muffin escapes out the top and sides. In an overmixed muffin the steam has a much harder time escaping, and so forms bubbles. This, as you might expect, increases the volume of the muffin, which is why a small slightly domed, even flattish muffin is always to be preferred over one with a prominent, conical peak. For the visual thrill of such a dramatic rise is invariably paid for by a rubbery interior.

It takes some moxie to move to the South and then a couple of years later start telling people how to make southern biscuits. But then who's going to come over and blog this for me, Paula Deen? I'm going for it.

Recipes for buttermilk biscuits, the archetypal chemically-leavened foodstuff, can be found everywhere. There are a million of 'em. I have my own personal favorites for various purposes (for dinner, for breakfast, in strawberry shortcake, you get me), but below is a very solid, standard recipe. This post, however, is more about technique, since it's my opinion that technique (more than any combination of ingredients) is what is responsible for producing the lightest, best-textured biscuit. What follows can be applied to just about any buttermilk or cream biscuit recipe.

Fundamentally, the process is about preventing the formation of gluten. Thus you want to handle the dough as little as humanly possible, and come hell or high water, avoid anything that resembles kneading. "Patting" is the order of the day where biscuits are concerned. Personally I find that a 50-50 mix of all-purpose flour and cake flour (essentially pastry flour) produces the best combination of light texture and crispy exterior, but that may just be me.

Leaving all your dairy ingredients in the fridge (biscuits are one of the few baking preparations where that's preferable), start by sifting all your dry ingredients (flours, salt, baking powder, and sugar if you're a northern nancy like me) into a bowl:

Dump in your chilled butter and/or lard pieces, already cut into small bits...

...and using only the tips of your fingers, "pinch" the butter into the flour until it's mostly even with a few lumps.

Now the delicate part. Pour in your buttermilk (which should be cold so as to prevent the butter from softening or melting), and with a spatula start incorporating it.

After about 30 seconds of turning the bowl while you flip (this is essentially folding), the flour should be completely moistened, about like so.

Now, using your hand — but without kneading — collect the dough together in a rough ball.

Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface, and pat it down into a layer about half an inch thick.

Next: cut. Here you want to be careful to push straight down and through the dough without twisting. Biscuits, though they are chemically leavened, nevertheless rely on butter layers for a good deal of their lift. You don't want to mess those up. If the dough is a little crumbly that's no big deal.

Lay them out on a sheet pan and bake on a high shelf in the oven at 500. The whole process including baking should take you about twenty minutes. Budda-bing, budda-bang, budda-boom, that's biscuits the way God intended them (if by God you mean a little old southern lady named Minnie). Serve hot with red pepper jelly.

UPDATE: A terrific tip from Sue in Texas

I am enjoying your blog immensely! I am from Texas and was curious about your method for biscuits...you have it down perfectly. The last thing I do before they go into the oven (and no self-respecting true southern biscuit baker would leave this out...) melt 1-2 tablespoons of (salted) butter (fresher, the better) in your pan (in the oven, of course) while you finish cutting out your biscuits. As soon as the butter has melted and warmed--not hot--take your pan out of the oven, set each biscuit in the melted butter, then turn over and put it in its appointed place. The butter creates a nice, golden and crispy crust on both sides....YUMMMM! uumm...I have to go make biscuits now...

Whipped egg foams are another one of those instances where the older the eggs are, the better (within reason of course). Why? Well because older eggs have runnier whites, and when egg whites are runny it's easier to put the hurt on the proteins they contain. Think of it like this: a whip cuts through a bowl of water with much more force than it does through a bowl of, say, honey. Which would you rather try to whip up into a foam? Older, room temperature whites are not only easier to work with, they whip higher.

The only problem with old eggs of course is that the yolk walls are thinner and so are more likely to rupture when you separate them, getting unwanted fat in your whites. A low temperature helps with that, but then if warm whites make better foam but cold yolks are better for separating, what the heck are you supposed to do? The answer: separate your old eggs right when they come out of the fridge, then let the whites come to room temperature before you start whipping. Sounds like a bit of a pain, and I suppose it is, but are you committed to that angel food cake or aren't you? Well?

So while it is true that whole eggs will make foams, it's also true, because of the fat they contain, that they'll never rise as high as all-white foams. Under the right conditions egg whites can be whipped up to about 8 times their original volume. With whole eggs you're doing well if you can do 3 times, and even then the foam they make won't last terribly long. However it will last long enough to be of some use in a thing like a flourless cake, where you want to lighten the consistency just enough to prevent it from being a chocolate brick. Though that does sound sort of appetizing...

...as in this flourless chocolate cake. Would you believe our farmer's market still has raspberries? No, neither would I. I bought these giants at the grocery store. In general I like my flourless chocolate cakes a bit firmer. In this case all I didn't have all the chocolate I needed on-hand. Usually I use a 50-50 mix of bittersweet and semisweet. For this one I had to use half milk chocolate (it was a rush project for one the wife's classrooms) so it turned out a little...goopy. Eh, they liked it. How bad can all that chocolate be? For a recipe comparable to the one I used, go to the Food Network site here:

www.foodnetwork.com/food/recipes/recipe/0,,FOOD_9936_30296,00.html

There is a popular myth that even a speck of egg yolk, butter or oil can make an egg white foam all but impossible to form. This is a, er...myth. For while you ought to go out of your way to prevent fat or other oily and/or soapy substances from coming in contact with your egg whites, a dot of errant yolk certainly won't hurt anything. But how does fat effect an egg white foam?

Well, you remember how I talked about how proteins form a reinforcing mesh around air bubbles. Part of the reason protein molecules collect so readily on the surfaces of those bubbles is because, like fat molecules, they have love-hate relationships with water. Some regions along their length love it (in other words, are hydrophilic) and others hate it (hydrophobic). The surface of an egg foam bubble is thus the perfect spot for them: they can stick their hydrophobic bits in the egg white, dangle their hydrophobic parts in the air, and bond to one another side-to-side in the bargain. Ahh...

But as I mentioned, fat molecules have both hydrophobic and hydrophilic parts too, and so are likewise attracted to bubble surfaces — where they compete with proteins for a spot. The difference of course is that unlike proteins, fats don't bond to each other side-to-side to form reinforcing networks. In fact, they only get in the way...keeping protein molecules from finding each other. Once the protein network is formed it's safe to expose fat molecules to it (which is why you can integrate a rich yolk and cheese mixture into a soufflé batter without destroying it). But until those proteins get a chance to do their bonding, fats should be denied an invitation to the party.

The frustrating thing about fiddling with proteins is that the same action that uncoils the things almost always re-coils them if you don't quit while you're ahead. It's this clenching action that causes custards to break, cooked meats to turn to rubber, and foams to collapse in a runny heap (albeit for different reasons). And the worst part is that once this protein clenching has happened, there's usually nothing you can do to reverse it.

Where egg whites are concerned, the point of no return occurs somewhere right after the stiff peak stage, when the protein molecules that were arranged in nice regular lattices...bonded elegantly in a mesh...cradling big fat bubbles of air...start to curl back up again. As this happens, bubbles pop as water molecules are squeezed out from between the proteins and the forces of surface tension once again take over. The egg white foam starts to turn grainy, then clumpy, then watery, at which point it's pretty much useless.

What to do about it? While nothing can ultimately protect an egg foam from too much whipping, there are a few steps you can take to broaden your margin of error. One of those is to employ a copper bowl, since copper ions do a remarkable job of plugging up the bonding sites on protein molecules, preventing them from bonding too readily and overcoagulating. The same thing works with silver if you happen to be a ward of Daddy Warbucks. Yet there are a couple of additives that work pretty well too. You can simply add copper in supplement form, which you can find at your friendly neighborhood health food store. Of course an easier option is acid, easily had in the form of vinegar, lemon juice or Cream of Tartar. Any will do a decent job of hobbling those bonding sites long enough to keep your foam from breaking down from overexertion.

That's of course assuming that nothing else goes wrong. Can anyone say "fat"?

The next stop on our Big Five Mixing Methods tour will be the Egg Foam Method. Of all the various mixing methods out there, the Egg Foam Method has the virtue of being the most direct, the simplest. For indeed, instead of spending time and effort to create the conditions most likely to produce gas bubbles (as with every other method), with the Egg Foam Method you simply whip them up yourself. The challenge then of course: to keep those bubbles from bursting.

The Egg Foam Method begins, unsurprisingly, with eggs. Usually just the whites, though it is possible to make egg foams using the yolks too (they don't fluff up as well, but more on the reasons for that later). The eggs are introduced to some sort of whipping device — a stand mixer, hand mixer, or whisk. Air begins to be incorporated and before long, voilà, ze foam. The next step is usually to introduce some form of acid stabilizer (cream of tartar, say) before the foam is folded into the other ingredients in the recipe.

What do those air bubbles do in the, er...whatever-it-is? Just as with all other mixing methods, they leaven (or "push up") the batter. Once again it's not expanding air that accomplishes the task. Air only expands by 20% or so in the heat of an oven. Rather it's the water in the batter that does it. As I mentioned last week, water expands to some 1400 times its original volume when it's converted to steam. The steam blows up the air bubbles and bingo, you've got leavening.

Interestingly it's the hand mixer, as opposed to one of the stand variety, that's the best tool for making egg foam, since it allows you to chase down every last little pocket of unwhipped white (my big ol' Viking mixer is terrible at egg whites). Of course you can do it by hand, but there are very few people out there with the forearm strength to whip up a mass of egg whites into peaks before some of the foam starts to collapse. I once knew a brawny Swede who could do it. That sweet old lady could have pimp-slapped a longshoreman unconscious. The rest of us mortals need machines.

Very wet bread doughs (up to about 80% hydration, or in other words, quite sticky) are very, very popular these days. Why? Well there are two reasons for that. The first is that wet bread doughs create big holes — or "open crumb", a thing that is very much desired in bread baking circles, since an open crumb is typically accompanied by a springy texture and a light, non-pasty mouthfeel. How does the extra moisture create an open crumb? In part because the wetter dough allows the CO2 bubbles to combine with one another like soap bubbles on the surface of dish water. Also, (and this gets into reason number two) moisture activates gluten.

But I thought you've always said flour + water + AGITATION = gluten! Yes that's true, and it IS true. However very recently, more than a few leading bakers and food science types have been experimenting with very wet, minimal and/or no-knead breads (anyone remember the New York Times' no-knead bread from last year?). How and why do they work so well? Apparently because the extra moisture and slack dough gives gluten molecules extra "wiggle room" to come into alignment with one another. Stiffer doughs require more working to accomplish the same thing.

All of which has led some bread experts to argue that wet, slack bread doughs are more "authentic" than stiffer doughs. How do they know? Well, they don't. However they claim that since bakers of old didn't have the heavy duty mixers we have now, they would have gravitated toward techniques that were less strenuous. I consider that to be extremely dubious reasoning. For one, because it's entirely speculative. Second, because it's hardly fair to try to judge pre-industrial bakers by our modern, lily-livered standards. Sure, commercial baking is a physical job. You have to be strong. But before about a hundred years ago you had to be a positive brute to do it. I doubt the same fellows who chopped the wood, toted the water, and hefted the massive sacks of grain and flour the were required for bread baking back then would have demurred from a little kneading. Though apparently these "experts" would have. Wimps.

I could spend quite a long time expounding on the microbiology of yeast breads (and in fact I often do that, as long-time readers of joepastry.com know). But if the Straight Dough Method had to be reduced to any one thing, that thing would be gluten. For bread making is all about gluten.

And why is that? Gluten, you see, is what's ultimately responsible for raising bread. Oh sure, yeast organisms produce the CO2 gas that gets all those little leavening bubbles started, but if it wasn't for the elastic mesh that is a gluten network, all that gas would just dissipate out the top and sides of the loaf, leaving a crumbly brick of moistened grain behind.

And so we knead, for as I'm constantly repeating, flour + moisture + agitation = gluten. In the case of the Muffin Method, the Biscuit Method and the Creaming Method this is a bad thing for the most part. But where the Straight Dough is concerned, it is a very, very good thing.

Gluten, you see is made up of two types of wheat protein: glutenin and gliadin. Glutenin is the workhorse of the two, being a long-chain molecule that is capable of bonding very tightly to other glutenin molecules — both end-to-end and side-to-side. Gliadin, by comparison, is a curlicue-shaped chain that forms only weak chemical bonds, though it nevertheless has its place in the Straight Dough universe, being a sort of wadded-up spoil-sport that keeps glutenin molecules from bonding to one another too tightly and/or in too many places. Together these two proteins create was is essentially a net that catches the CO2 bubbles the yeast create.

A common misconception among bread bakers is that it's this CO2 that's primarily responsible for raising bread. In fact what really leavens a loaf is steam. Similar to the creaming method, where sugar is driven into fat to create "seed" bubbles, CO2 creates the initial spaces that fill up with steam as the loaf bakes. Not being a physicist (or any type of real scientist for that matter), I can't say I know for sure if CO2 gas expands with heat. It probably does to some degree, though definitely not more than water, which, when converted to steam, occupies about 1600 times more space that it does when it's in liquid form. And so as the loaf heats the bubbles expand, with the stretchy gluten network expanding right along with them until the starch in the dough gelatinizes, the structure sets up, and much of the steam is finally forced out the surface of the loaf. The end result is the light fluffy substance we know as bread.

The last stop on our tour of the Big Five Mixing Methods is what is known as the Straight Dough Method. It is the method by which nearly all bread in the world is made. And if you've ever tried making your own bread before, you'll be familiar with it. It goes like this: a) mix flour, yeast and salt together, b) add water, c) knead until smooth, d) let dough rise until doubled in volume, e) punch dough down, f) shape your bread, g) let shaped loaves rise for a second time until doubled in volume, h) bake your bread. There, easy. The whole thing can be done in about three or four hours.

Only there's a problem, and that is that the unadulterated Straight Dough Method produces pretty lousy tasting bread. Or maybe that's going too far. I should probably say bland bread. Uninteresting bread, devoid of either much crust, much texture or much flavor. Which is why most serious bread bakers never employ it, except as a general framework for more ambitious bread-baking projects. For stand-alone loaves of bread, you can get far more interesting effects by employing starters (what might be called the Starter Method) and sponges (the Sponge Method), which allow the baker to culture large quantities of flavor-producing bacteria before the dough is baked.

All of which is not to say that the Straight Dough method is without its uses. As I said, the vast majority of the world's bread production (i.e. all that which is made outside of the world of hard-core bread fanatics) is made this way. Flat breads are a notable example: from Middle Eastern breads like pita and lavash to Italian pizza and focaccia. And then there are day-to-day items like rolls and buns which, even though they are made via the plain-jane Straight Dough Method, are still markedly better when made at home and from scratch. But more on that later. Let's talk about how the Straight Dough Method actually works...

It's possible, you know. It happens when you beat butter and sugar too long or too hard, and the sugar begins to dissolve in the mixture (which it can do because butter is about 17% water). Thus you can tell when you've over-creamed by rubbing the mixture between your fingers. A smooth-feeling cream means you've over-done it: the sugar crystals have dissolved and the air pockets have collapsed.

A similar thing can happen if your butter is too warm and/or you attempt the creaming method when the temperature in the kitchen is much over 70. Part (or all) of the butter will liquify around the sugar crystals, collapsing the air pockets and compromising the leavening. This is why you tend to get flat chocolate chip cookies when you mix your dough on a warm day and fluffy ones when you do it on a cool day, even though you're using the same technique and the same ingredients. Temperature makes a big difference.

You may never have heard of the Muffin Method or the Biscuit Method, but if you've made a batch of chocolate chip cookies with the recipe on the side of the Tollhouse Morsel bag, you've heard of the Creaming Method. Typically, the Creaming Method involves beating a quantity of butter with a near equivalent quantity of crystalline sugar until the mixture forms a light "creamy" froth. It's incredibly difficult to do (well) by hand, though my old neighbor Lilly Lundstrom, the Swedish Baking Queen, had no trouble managing it. But then she tipped the scales at 250 and had arms like a longshoreman. The rest of us mortals need a mixer.

So, what does the creaming method accomplish? In a nutshell, a fine texture with a regular crumb (i.e. lots and lots of little holes, all about the same size), like a cake. And in fact the creaming method is the go-to method for mixing cake batters, which bake up into light and tasty — though not actually tender — sweets. But Joe, all cakes are tender, aren't they? Actually no. For while a good cake layer is yielding to the tooth (a result of that fine crumb), in reality it's rather firm. Which is intentional, since cake layers need to be strong enough to stack and support the weight of lots of heavy icing and decorations. If a cake layers were as tender as, say, a well-mixed muffin, they'd fall apart under their own weight. Professional cake makers place a high premium on firm layers. If you ever watch the gonzo baking show Ace of Cakes on the Food Network, you can see that the cake layers they use are incredibly strong, almost like styrofoam (but, you know, that you can eat).

To create the "cream" that the Creaming Method is named for, you start by putting a quantity of soft butter into the bowl of a mixer fitted with a paddle. Not too soft, mind you, you want it just plaible, definitely not so soft that it's greasy-looking. You set the mixer going, and once the butter is broken up, you add the sugar in a steady stream. Once all the sugar is in, you turn the mixer up and beat the mixture silly. You're done when it's significantly increased in volume, pale yellow looking, and you can no longer see any sugar crystals (though you should be able to feel them when you rub a bit of the mixture between your fingers).

What's happened here? For starters you've combined the two ingredients, but more than that, you've driven the sugar crystals into the butter, creating lots and lots of little, regular air pockets. These pockets will go on to form the basis of the cake's structure in much the same way bubbles in an egg foam form the structure of a soufflé...only in a cake there's quite a lot more building material (i.e. flour and sugar) involved. But like a soufflé, each little pocket will fill with up with expanding gas and steam in the oven, providing lift. But more on that later, since I've got work to do.

Forget about Harley vs. Kawasaki, Beatles vs. Rolling Stones, mulching vs. bagging...if you want to witness a true breakdown of civilized discourse, try asking a group of octogenarian bakers what kind of fat makes the best pie crust or biscuit. Butter or shortening? Or maybe lard? Here in the South that subject is dinner party taboo.

Why the big flap? Well it all depends on where your allegiances lie in the whole flavor-vs.-texture debate. If a tender texture is what's important to you, then you're probably a shortening advocate. If flavor is what really rocks your world, then you're a butter person. For you can't have both perfect flavor and perfect texture in a pie crust or biscuit, and the reason comes down to some important differences between butter and shortening.

What is that difference? Primarily moisture. About 17% of butter is water. Compare that to shortening which contains no water. And that makes a big difference in a dough. For as I mentioned earlier in the week, water goes hand-in-hand with gluten. The more you have in your dough, the more likely you'll be to inadvertently create active gluten. Even if you go to extremes to avoid working a dough, where moisture is present, those long spindly molecules find a way to hold hands. And that means toughness.

A pie crust made with all shortening is an incredibly tender affair. Especially when made with a Southern-style soft wheat flour, it can be so delicate it barely holds its shape (the fact that the very outer layer of the crust essentially "fries" in the oven heat also gives shortening crusts a somewhat "crispy" edge). The trouble is flavor. Shortening is extremely bland (plus it has that characteristic tongue-coating mouthfeel). Butter by comparison is loaded with rich flavor. It browns a crust nicely due to the proteins is contains, and its just-below-body-temperature melt point means no greasy feeling on the tongue. It also tends to create a flakier crust since its moisture turns to steam in the oven, creating a small rise that helps preserve the butter-layers.

Of course more than a few people attempt to split the difference. There are very few home bakers out there that employ an all-shortening pie crust (though there are plenty of people that make all-shortening biscuits). Still there's very little agreement as to how much is enough, or for that matter too much.

The third-party spoilers in this partisan debate are the lard-crust advocates, who argue that lard is the best of all possible worlds. Like shortening it's all fat and so gives thirsty gluten molecules no help. Like butter it has a low melt point (providing a non-greasy mouthfeel). It browns fairly well and is loaded with flavor, granted it's a porky kind of flavor, but the people who love it swear by it.

So, I guess it's a pick-your-poison kind of dealie (though actually all these fats are about the same in terms of their "health value"). The general rule of thumb when considering a fat for your Biscuit Method bakery: shortening (or lard) = tender, crispy and denser, butter = flaky, flavorful and lighter. Choose your side. Or alternately join the search for the ultimate compromise. Should you find it, you should probably run for president.

The biscuit method is probably the simplest of all the Big Five mixing techniques. On first glance, it resembles Muffin Method in that the dry ingredients and the wet ingredients are mixed together separately before being combined. The key difference is that the fat, which is almost always a solid fat, is rubbed into the dry goods before the main mixing event begins.

What are the advantages to that? First, the "cutting in" of fat serves the function of coating and lubricating flour granules, which greatly reduces the ability of the gluten molecules they contain to bond to one another. Thus, the Biscuit Method makes baked goods tender. The other big thing the Biscuit Method does is make things flaky.

How's that? Well remember the rubbing thing. Most of the time when you dive into a recipe that employs the Biscuit Method, you'll come across instructions directing you to stop rubbing when the fat blobs are about the size of peas (or at the very least when the mixture starts to look "like corn meal"). The reason you do this is because flakiness is a direct result of odd-sized blobs of fat, which, when the dough is rolled out into a sheet, form semisolid layers. When the dough is baked these layers melt away, leaving long slender gaps in the structure. These gaps are what are responsible for the texture we know as "flaky".

Like the Muffin Method, the Biscuit Method is characterized by minimal mixing. Once the dry ingredients and the wet ingredients finally come together, the less you work the dough the better. This is especially important with pie crust, where any gluten formation at all can lead to significant shrinkage and toughness. Which makes me think I should make a pie this week too. Whaddya say?