I Don’t Want Your Flaky Biscuit
Okay, I do, but that’s just because I won’t turn down any biscuit. Even the most hockey puck reminiscent biscuit likely has a golf ball’s size worth of redeeming deliciousness in the center. So, I will eat your flaky biscuit, but I will do so while mulling over why we are so engrossed with the flaky. Why, exactly, do we want our biscuits to be flaky? What end do those highly coveted flakes serve?
Yes, flakes, when properly executed, do allow for the dismemberment of a biscuit without a knife. I will concede that breaking open a biscuit along a perfect fault line of flake is fun. However, are you eating that biscuit plain? No butter? No jam? Are you spreading butter and jam on that flaky biscuit with your fingers? Or might you be using a…knife? A knife that could, perhaps, also split your biscuit perfectly in half – no extra dishes required.
If you are, in fact, eating your biscuit entirely unadorned (why?), then sure, enjoy sloughing off flake after soft, dreamy flake. But if you’re even just buttering your biscuit, you’re not flaking it apart until nothing remains but the dry, crusty shell. If you were, you’d have to re-butter each and every flake as it emerges anew. While I would deeply respect the effort (dare I say craftsmanship?) involved in such belaboring, and would envy each perfectly constructed bite, I simply do not believe that many biscuits are being consumed with such reverence, regardless of their station of flakiness.
Furthermore, if you are utilizing your biscuit as a vessel for a breakfast sandwich, its flaky status could not be of less importance. In fact, there may be no worse offense to laboriously laminated layers than to bite straight into them without a single whisper of appreciation for the strata of flour and butter now muddled into a mush with egg and sausage in your mouth.
Thus, why do you want a flaky biscuit? I, for one, unabashedly admit to a preference for a tender, fluffy biscuit – one with a gorgeously golden and crisp exterior and a supple, pillowy, yielding crumb. Madly buttery. No dusty excess flour in sight.
Despite my tirade against flaky biscuits, I do believe in the power of a good flake in the proper time and place – a warm apple pie with a crisp, infinitely layered crust and melty vanilla ice cream is a true delicacy that would not be as exceptional a combination without the textural intervention of the flaky crust. I simply believe the flake’s scope of influence has spread too far, and its grip on the collective mind prevents critical thought about its place on our plates.