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Potato Biscuits
2 cups Five Roses flour 2 teaspoons baking powder 2 cups finely mashed potatoes 1 tablespoon lard Pinch of salt Water to make biscuit dough.
Sift flour and baking powder together.
Add finely mashed potatoes, lard, pinch of salt, and water to make biscuit dough.
Roll and bake. A little ginger may be added if desired.
A leftover-mashed-potato biscuit with an unusually high proportion of potato to flour. The original assumes you know what "biscuit dough" should feel like and gives no oven temperature or time.
- Add water last and sparinglyTwo cups of mashed potato already carries a great deal of moisture, so the dough may need only a tablespoon or two of water, or none at all. Add just enough to bring it together into a soft, barely tacky dough; too much and it cannot be rolled.
- Oven and timeThe original gives neither. A hot oven, 425-450F for about 12-15 minutes, until risen and lightly browned at the edges, suits a biscuit dough of this kind. Check the base as well as the top before taking them out.
- Five Roses flourA Canadian all-purpose flour milled from hard spring wheat, somewhat stronger than most American all-purpose. Ordinary all-purpose works; handle the dough lightly, as potato biscuits toughen quickly with kneading.
- The potatoesPlain boiled potatoes, mashed without butter, milk or seasoning, and pressed through a ricer or sieve so no lumps remain. Drain them well or the dough will be slack; leftover cold potato will serve, though warm potato is easier to work in evenly.
- LardOne tablespoon for two cups of flour is a very lean biscuit by modern standards; the potato supplies the tenderness. Shortening or butter substitutes directly if lard is not to hand.
- Baking powderTwo teaspoons to two cups of flour is on the low side for the weight of this dough. Modern double-acting baking powder at 3 teaspoons gives a better lift, and the dough should go into the oven promptly once mixed.
- Rolling and yieldRoll about 3/4 inch thick and cut 2-inch rounds; expect something in the region of two dozen. Rolled thinner than that the potato makes them dense.
- The gingerA quarter to half a teaspoon of ground ginger is enough to register. It pushes the biscuits toward the teatime end of the table rather than the supper end.
The Five Roses Cook Book was published by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company, whose head office was in Montreal, and distributed in very large numbers to Canadian households who bought Five Roses flour, which is why the recipes name the brand in the ingredient list. Potato biscuits belong to a long family of thrift breads that stretched expensive white flour with cooked potato, a habit older than baking powder and common wherever potatoes were plentiful and flour was bought by the barrel. The potato does more than economise: its starch holds water, so the biscuits tend to keep soft longer than a plain flour biscuit, which is often given as the reason cooks went on making them after the economising was no longer necessary. The optional ginger may echo a British and Irish habit of sweetening or spicing potato cakes served with tea.