Southern Belle Biscuits, Nashville

When Southerner and journalist Maryann Byrd was working on her Emmy Award–winning PBS documentary The Rise of the Southern Biscuit, she made an alarming discovery. The art of the biscuit, that longtime staple of Southern dinnertime, was dying—mostly due to the easy access of frozen biscuits-in-a-tube that every grocery store carries. After much trial and error (and some soul-searching), she crafted Southern Belle Biscuits, a traditional biscuit mix designed to help home cooks bake their own fresh-baked biscuits. Byrd sources the winter white wheat flour from farms down South, and even teaches classes in her Nashville headquarters to pass her love of the biscuit along to others. Her shop doesn't just sell the famous flour, though; Byrd also packs that key ingredient nto bundles that include cooking tools such as cutters and cloths.