Home › Introductory Recipes › Simple Biscuit Dough
Simple Biscuit Dough
Sift one teaspoon of salt and two (rounding) of baking powder through one quart of flour and rub into the whole one heaping tablespoon of shortening. In the centre pour gradually one pint of sweet milk, or part milk and part water, making a soft dough with as little mixing as possible. Roll out; cut and bake quickly.
A lean, quickly mixed biscuit dough of the sort a fruit cookbook keeps on hand as a base for shortcakes, cobblers, dumplings and roly-polys. Two things need translating: the volume measures for flour and milk, and what "bake quickly" meant to a cook with a wood range.
- A quart of flourFlour was measured by volume, so a quart is 4 cups, taken in this period as roughly 1 lb / 450 g of all-purpose flour. Note that the recipe sifts the salt and baking powder through the flour, so the flour is measured and then sifted together with the leavening.
- A pint of milkTwo cups of liquid to four cups of flour gives a very soft, sticky dough by modern habit, closer to a drop batter than a rolling dough. Hold back a quarter of the milk and add it only as needed.
- Sweet milkSimply fresh milk, as opposed to the sour milk or buttermilk that a household otherwise had in quantity. Whole milk is the closest match.
- Baking powderTwo rounding teaspoons per quart of flour is light by current practice, which runs to about a teaspoon or more per cup. Period baking powders were often single-acting and used more generously in some books; if the biscuits come out dense, increase to 4 teaspoons.
- One heaping tablespoon of shorteningAbout 1 oz — a notably lean dough, meant to be a vehicle for sweetened fruit rather than a rich biscuit. Lard or butter both work. For a fruit shortcake, doubling the fat and adding a tablespoon of sugar gives a better result.
- Bake quicklyThe recipe names no oven term. Biscuits of this kind want a hot oven, around 425-450F (220-230C), to set the crust and drive the leavening fast; roughly 10 to 14 minutes for rounds cut half an inch thick.
- As little mixing as possibleThis is the hinge of the recipe. Work the fat in until it is the size of peas, pour in the milk gradually as the recipe directs, and stop the moment the dough coheres. Extra kneading develops gluten and turns the crumb tough and bready.
- YieldA large batch: enough dough for two 8-inch shortcake layers, or a top crust for a large deep-dish fruit pudding, or a good number of 2-inch rounds cut half an inch thick.
Chemically leavened biscuits belong to the American nineteenth century: cream of tartar and soda first, then commercial baking powders from the 1850s onward, which let a cook put hot bread on the table in half an hour without yeast or a sponge set overnight. That speed is what makes a dough like this one so useful. Berries and stone fruit arrive all at once and will not keep, and this dough is the standard base beneath them rrolked thin for shortcake, dropped over stewed fruit as a cobbler, wrapped around apples for dumplings, or spread with fruit and rolled into a pudding to be steamed.