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Wafers (Quart flour Yolk of one egg)
1 quart flour. Yolk of one egg. 1 heaping tablespoonful lard. A little salt. Mix with milk, as stiff as you would for biscuit. Beat well with the biscuit beater, roll out thin and put in the wafer irons. Put in the fire and bake.--Mrs. W. S.
A beaten-dough wafer of the Virginia sort — closer to a hard cracker than a sweet wafer, and meant for cheese, butter or tea. The dough is stiff and unleavened, so all the texture comes from the beating and from rolling it thin.
- The hinge: beat it, then roll it very thinThere is no leavening here at all, so the only lift comes from air worked into the dough and from steam. Beat the stiff dough for 20 to 30 minutes with a mallet or rolling pin, folding it over on itself repeatedly until it blisters and turns satiny, then roll it thin enough to read through. Underbeaten or thick dough bakes into a tooth-breaking slab.
- A quart of flourFlour was measured by volume in this book: a quart is 4 cups, roughly 18 to 20 oz of modern all-purpose flour. This makes a large batch — several dozen wafers — and it halves and quarters without trouble.
- "Mix with milk"No quantity is given because the cook was expected to judge it; something in the region of 3/4 to 1 cup of milk to a quart of flour will get you there. The recipe's own gauge is the one to follow: as stiff as a biscuit dough, only just holding together, not tacky.
- The biscuit beaterIn Virginia kitchens the beater was usually a heavy wooden mallet or similar implement worked against a hardwood block; mechanical dough brakes with rollers were also in use for the same job. A stand mixer with the dough hook run 10 to 12 minutes, or repeated passes through a pasta roller, will approximate the work, though neither reproduces the pounding exactly.
- LardOne heaping tablespoon of lard per quart of flour is a very lean dough by modern standards, which is exactly why the wafers snap. Rendered lard is still the right choice; butter browns faster and shortening gives a duller flavour, but either will work.
- Wafer irons and "put in the fire"Wafer irons were hinged iron plates on long handles, greased lightly and held in the coals, turned once, perhaps a minute or two a side. Without them, prick the rounds all over with a fork and bake on an ungreased sheet in a hot oven, 425F, for 6 to 8 minutes, until pale gold and dry through; a pizzelle or krumkake iron is the closest modern equivalent.
- Doneness and keepingThey should be crisp and barely coloured rather than browned; colour comes on fast and the edges scorch before the centres. Cool completely on a rack; they keep for weeks in a tin and can be refreshed for a few minutes in a low oven.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1879), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions by Virginia housewives, is full of this kind of beaten dough — beaten biscuit, beaten wafers, cheese wafers — because the beaten-dough tradition was a regional signature of the upper South. The method is older than any question of leavening, and in a state where soft winter wheat gave a low-gluten flour, prolonged pounding was the way to get lightness and a clean snap; the labour involved is one of the plainer records of who was doing the work in these households. The long-handled hinged wafer iron, held directly in the coals, was standard hearth equipment well before cookstoves, and the wafers themselves were served with cheese, or with tea, in the manner of an English water biscuit. Recipes signed with initials, as this one is with "Mrs. W. S.", run all through the book and reflect its origin in contributions from a large number of Southern women, named and half-named.