Tea Biscuit
1 cake FLEISCHMANN'S YEAST 1/2 cup milk, scalded and cooled 1/2 cup lukewarm water 1 tablespoonful sugar 3 1/2 cups sifted flour 1 scant teaspoonful salt 2 tablespoonfuls lard or butter, melted THESE Tea Biscuits make an ideal accompaniment for your salads, preserves and marmalades. Follow directions closely and you'll vote them fit to set before a king. They're particularly delicious served hot.
Dissolve the yeast and sugar in lukewarm liquid. Add lard or butter and half the flour. Beat until smooth. Add salt and then the rest of flour, or enough to make a moderately firm dough. Knead thoroughly, or "throw and roll" as shown on page 15. Roll out and cut with a biscuit-cutter. Place in well-greased, shallow pans, slight distance apart. Cover and set to rise about two hours or until double in bulk. When light, bake in a hot oven ten minutes.
An American biscuit raised by yeast instead of baking powder, which makes it a small soft roll. Anyone expecting flaky layers will be disappointed, and no adjustment will produce them.
- A roll, not a biscuitThere is no cold fat cut into the flour and no chemical leavening. Two tablespoons of melted butter against three and a half cups of flour gives a lean, moderately firm dough that rises once and bakes into a soft roll. The flakiness of a baking-powder biscuit comes from solid fat in layers, and there is none here to layer.
- A scant teaspoonfulScant means a touch under a level measure, as heaping means over it; the distinction mattered when every measure was taken with the same spoon. A scant teaspoon of salt to three and a half cups of flour is on the low side for modern palates, and a full level teaspoon will do the dough no harm.
- One rise onlyThe dough is kneaded, rolled, cut and then left to rise for two hours in the pan. There is no bulk fermentation at all, which is the main reason the flavour is plain. An hour in the bowl before rolling costs an afternoon and buys a noticeably better biscuit.
- Two hours is a ceilingA whole cake of yeast, about a sachet of dried, is generous for three and a half cups of flour, and modern kitchens run warmer than the ones this was written in. Watch for doubled and puffy rather than counting the hours; in a warm room this will sail past its best well short of two.
- They are meant to touchA slight distance apart means exactly that. As they rise the biscuits meet, and they bake with pale soft sides that tear apart cleanly. Spaced widely they brown all round and dry out.
- Hot oven, ten minutesAbout 425°F (220°C). Small lean breads bake fast and stale faster; take them out as the tops just colour. They are at their best inside the hour, which is why the headnote keeps insisting on serving them hot.
Biscuit began as a word for something baked twice and dried hard, which is precisely what the same booklet means a few pages away by Zwieback, since the German word says the same thing in its own language. In American kitchens the word drifted a long way from that: a biscuit became a small soft bread eaten hot, usually raised with baking powder, while British usage kept the dry, sweet, keeping sense it still has. A yeast-raised tea biscuit sits awkwardly among all three meanings, which may be why the headnote works so hard, promising something fit to set before a king and twice insisting on the heat of the serving. Stripped of the copy, it is a plain roll for a tea table. The booklet is selling the occasion rather more than the recipe.