The Biscuit Baker

My mother was a great biscuit maker. As a grown-up, I found out what she called “biscuits” were really “yeast rolls,” but no matter – in my mind they’ll always be biscuits. That big yellow Pyrex bowl would come out and…yum! Our mouths would start watering and we would greedily anticipate a couple (or three!) of those satisfying treats sliding down our throats in a few hours, to say nothing of their glorious baking aroma filling our noses.

Occasionally they wouldn’t “turn out,” or so she’d lament, but I can’t say we were able to tell. Or maybe it just didn’t matter, I can’t exactly remember. Biscuits were mom and we loved them. And her.

Now that I’ve dabbled in dough a bit myself, I realize that yeast rolls are not always easy-peasy. The result can depend on the weather, whether you spent enough time kneading (no dough hooks on the mixer for mom – she used her muscles) and myriad other factors. They also take time and a mother of 4 “stairsteps” just didn’t have much of that. This was also in the days before “rapid-rise” yeast – it just took its old sweet time back then. So, it dawns on me that maybe we should have told her how much I loved those biscuits – and her for making them.

No, we weren’t complete ingrates. I know we often said, “Mom – these are so good!” But I don’t think we quite “got it” that those biscuits were much more than flour and salt, yeast and water – they were love. And commitment. And determination. And hopes. And dreams. They were pastry proof that we were important gifts from a marvelous God.

While today I can whip up a decent homemade roll, in my admittedly aging and getting-more-nostalgic-by-the-day memory they don’t quite match up to Mom’s. I often don’t even bother to do the “whipping,” resorting instead to the frozen Rhodes (which do a quite passable job, if the truth be known).

They’re just not Jean’s.

How happy is everyone who fears the Lord, who walks in His ways! You will surely eat what your hands have worked for. You will be happy, and it will go well for you...May the Lord bless you from Zion, so that you will see the prosperity of Jerusalem all the days of your life, and will see your children's children. ~Psalms 128:1-2, 5-6