Big Biscuit Barn owner Phyllis Cabe works her way through the recipe that made her biscuits famous. Cabe is now offering summer biscuit-making classes.
Photo by Hannah CampbellPhyllis Cabe says she believes her biscuits are a boulevard into the minds and dreams of her Big Biscuit Barn patrons, who she encourages relentlessly because the Barn is her own dream come true.
“I don’t really believe I’m here to sell biscuits,” Cabe said. “But I have to sell biscuits to stay here. People will tell you their deep, dark secrets. One lady even started crying one day.”
Cabe is now scheduling her summer biscuit classes – a day of biscuit-making, eating and dream-talking.
The class officially covers plain biscuits, garlic cheese drop biscuits and two specialty sweet rolls, the Cinnibarn and a strawberry shortcake biscuit.
Cabe’s classes walk students through cutting shortening into her “tweaked” White Lily flour, mixing in the buttermilk and folding the dough into flaky layers, all by hand.
“The best tools that you have are your hands and your flour,” said Cabe, adding that she lets the dough sit for 20 minutes twice during the procedure, called “proofing.”
“It makes a totally different product,” she said.
Biscuits made by old men are delicious, she said.
“Men come in here and they’ve never held a spoon in their life, never looked at a bowl, and they make the best biscuits,” she said.
Cabe’s restaurant, which opened in 2007, is a friendly place whose open kitchen bears all to customers.
“I wanted people to actually see what we did,” she said. “Most people have become our friends and we call them by name and people love that,” she said.
Daily specials include things like chicken and dumplings with dressing, grilled ham, double-dipped chicken tenders and bacon-wrapped meatloaf. Regulars include the Barnstormer, a biscuit layered with Polish sausage, fried egg, gravy, tomato and onions.
BAKE YOUR OWNBiscuit class is $30 and includes all supplies and lunch. For more information call the Big Biscuit Barn, 1391 Lafayette Road between Rossville and Fort Oglethorpe, at (706) 861-0000.
“This is my playhouse,” Cabe said. “This is where I’ve always wanted to be and it took me 55 years to get here. I thought one day I’d put ‘Praise the Lord’ on the sign simply because he’s helped me so much.”
This is the zeal she says she wants to pass on to her biscuit students and patrons.
“Their daily lives just get so humdrum,” she said. She wants to light that fire in them to sail around the world or open a shop as she did after 16 years of food vending at craft festivals, color cruises and county fairs.
“People do not know how important it is to patronize the little man,” Cabe said.
Cabe said she’s working to start a more upscale catering business by August, with bacon-spinach quiche, breakfast casseroles and shrimp and grits, which she’ll deliver and set up.
“They can throw a tablecloth on the table. Voila. Food,” she said.