The Biscuit Shed

Carson Stanley may be from the South, but it took Martha Stewart to show him how to make a mean biscuit.

“It was a video on YouTube and she said to freeze butter and put it in a food processor with a little scoop of the flour you’re going to make the biscuits with. It blends the frozen butter with your flour and emulsifies the whole thing,” Stanley says, adding, “It sure isn’t something I learned in school.”

Stanley, whose family has been in the food business for generations—his grandfather ran a restaurant and bar in Anderson, South Carolina, and his father was in restaurant supply sales—wanted to follow in their footsteps and sell crepes at the farmers’ market in Brattleboro, Vermont, where he was living. His friends convinced him that he was Southern, not French, and the thing the locals needed was good biscuits. The only problem was that he’d never really made biscuits.

That’s when he began studying at “YouTube University,” he says, watching an untold number of old ladies making biscuits in their kitchens. Most weren’t useful. Some, like the Martha Stewart tip, he incorporated into his own recipe. He also insisted on using quality ingredients for the biscuit sandwiches: chicken raised free range and without antibiotics, high-quality butter, real buttermilk. The transition achieved what he was looking for with crepes: a delicious base for sweet or savory fillings and toppings.

By the time he was ready to face the committee that would decide if he’d make itinto the farmers’ market, he had to tell them, “Change of plans. No crepes, but taste these biscuits.”