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Baking-Powder Breads
Baking-Powder Biscuits. 2 cupfuls flour, 2 tablespoonfuls lard, 1 cupful milk, teaspoonful salt, 2 teaspoonfuls Calumet baking powder.
Sift the salt, baking powder, and flour together, rub in the lard, add the milk, and beat to a soft dough.
Turn out on a floured baking board, roll out about an inch thick, and cut into biscuits. Lay in a baking pan, brush the tops with milk, and bake in a quick oven.
Drop Biscuits. 3 cupfuls flour, 2 tablespoonfuls butter, Warm the butter in the milk, pour over the well-beaten yolks of the eggs, add sufficient flour to make it pour, then the salt and baking powder. Beat the whole thoroughly, fold in the whipped whites of the eggs, and bake on a hot griddle.
The first recipe is complete and workable; the second has been mangled in printing and cannot be followed as given. Notes on both follow.
- The drop biscuit recipe is incompleteIts ingredient list breaks off after the butter, yet the method calls for milk, egg yolks, whipped whites, salt and baking powder in unstated amounts. Nothing can be reconstructed from this honestly; use a current recipe for drop biscuits or egg griddle cakes. Note also that the method describes a batter poured onto a griddle, not biscuits baked in a pan.
- "A quick oven"Usually glossed as about 425-450F. Biscuits rolled an inch thick will take roughly 12-15 minutes and should be pale gold on top, browner underneath.
- Calumet baking powderA double-acting alum-phosphate powder, still sold. Any modern double-acting powder substitutes measure for measure; two teaspoons to two cups of flour is on the low side by current standards, where one to one and a half teaspoons per cup is usual.
- The fatTwo tablespoons of lard for two cups of flour makes a lean, bready biscuit rather than a flaky one. Lard is worth using if you have it; butter or shortening works, and modern flakiness comes from keeping the fat cold and cutting it in only to pea-sized pieces rather than rubbing it smooth.
- "Beat to a soft dough"Do not take this literally. Stir only until the flour is damp and the dough just holds together, then pat or roll once. Beating develops gluten and gives tough biscuits.
- FlourHousehold flour of the period differed from modern flour, so hydration will vary. Use all-purpose, and expect to adjust the milk by a tablespoon or two either way to get a dough that is soft but not sticky.
- YieldAbout ten to twelve biscuits from a two-inch cutter. Set them close together in the pan so the sides support each other and rise higher.
Chemical leavening reorganized American home baking in the second half of the nineteenth century: where a bread once required a yeast sponge set the night before, baking powder produced hot bread in half an hour, and "baking-powder breads" became a standing chapter heading in household manuals. The naming of a specific brand here is telling. Household Discoveries and similar compendia of the 1900s were sold by subscription, and Calumet, a Chicago double-acting powder generally dated to 1889, was among the most aggressive advertisers of the period, distributing recipe leaflets and cookbooklets that specified its own product by name.