crust that was lighter and crisper, with increased surface area
(and we all know that more surface area = more crispness,
right?).
Finally, I used a trick that a friend, a former employee of
the Chick-fil-A Southern fast-food fried-chicken chain had
told me about. He’d mentioned that once the chicken was
breaded, the later batches always come out better than the
earlier ones as bits of the flour mixture clumped together,
making for an extra-craggy coat. Adding a couple
tablespoons of buttermilk to the breading mix and working
it in with my fingertips before dredging the chicken
simulated this effect nicely.† †
Adding buttermilk to the dredge creates the extra-craggy
surface on the left.The last problem—the coating overcooking long before