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Flour Mixtures Continued: Bread and Other Yeast Mixtures: Biscuit
ENTIRE WHEAT BISCUIT 1/4 cake of compressed yeast 1/2 teaspoonful of salt (to mix at night) 1/4 cup of melted shortening 1 cake of compressed yeast 1/4 cup of molasses (to mix in the morning) 1 1/2 cups sifted entire wheat 1/2 cup lukewarm water flour 1/2 cup of scalded milk 3/4 cup of white bread flour Soften the yeast in the water, add the liquid ingredients, then stir in the flour; cut through the dough again and again, to mix very thoroughly. The dough is too soft to knead. Cover and set aside, to become light, as usual. Melt a little shortening, dip the fingers into it, pull off bits of the dough (about two ounces or one-fourth a cup) and shape them, one by one, into rounds. If the fingers are kept well-buttered, the dough will not stick to them in the least. Dispose the rounds close together in buttered baking pans. Let become very light, bake about fifty minutes. Glaze with starch or starch and sugar.
The ingredient list is scrambled by the original two-column typesetting: the two yeast quantities are alternatives, not additions. Use 1/4 cake if you mix the dough at night, 1 cake if you mix it in the morning and want it baked the same day.
- Compressed yeastA household cake of compressed (fresh) yeast in this period was usually about 0.6 oz, conventionally reckoned as the equivalent of one modern packet of active dry yeast, or 2 1/4 teaspoons. A quarter cake is therefore roughly 1/2 teaspoon of dry yeast -- why the overnight rise takes all night.
- Entire wheat flour"Entire wheat" was a finer whole-wheat flour, sifted to remove the coarsest bran, and distinct from graham flour, which kept everything. Ordinary whole-wheat flour works; sifting it as directed and discarding the bran left in the sieve gets you closer to the original crumb.
- Scalded milkScalding is usually explained as denaturing components of raw milk that would otherwise weaken gluten. With pasteurized milk it is generally held unnecessary -- warm it to lukewarm and go on. If you do scald it, let it cool before it meets the yeast.
- Working the soft doughThe instruction to cut through the dough again and again is the hinge here. There is no kneading stage, so most of the mixing and structure-building comes from repeated cutting and folding with a stiff blade or bench scraper. Do it thoroughly.
- Buttered fingers, not flouredShaping the rounds with shortening-dipped fingers rather than added flour keeps the dough soft; the recipe is explicit that well-buttered fingers stop it sticking. Adding flour at this stage would tighten the crumb.
- Oven and timeThe recipe gives no oven temperature at all, only "bake about fifty minutes." Fifty minutes is long for 2-oz rolls by modern reckoning; a moderate oven of around 350F for 25 to 30 minutes suits rolls baked close together in a pan, and an interior temperature of about 195F is a surer test than the clock.
- The starch glazeBoil about a teaspoon of cornstarch with half a cup of water until clear and slightly thick, adding a teaspoon of sugar if you want more shine, and brush it over the rolls as they come out of the oven. It dries to a soft gloss and softens the crust.
- YieldThe recipe states no yield. About 2 1/4 cups of flour and a cup of liquid, plus molasses and shortening, portioned at the specified two ounces a roll, will make rather more than a handful -- enough for two people over more than one meal, which is the scale the whole book works at.
Cooking for Two is by Janet McKenzie Hill, longtime editor of the Boston Cooking School Magazine, and is one of a number of American books of the period built around the small household rather than a family with servants. Whole-wheat rolls were fashionable when it was written: the health-reform current running from Sylvester Graham in the 1830s and 40s through to the Battle Creek sanitarium cooks later in the century had made unbolted wheat a moral as well as a dietary matter, and "entire wheat" was a respectable term by Hill's day. Molasses is period-typical as a sweetener in such breads. The two yeast quantities -- a little for an overnight rise, four times as much for a same-day one -- reflect a kitchen where fresh yeast came from the grocer in small cakes and dough was timed around the cook's day rather than a refrigerator.