Home › Sunday Morning Breakfasts › Tea Biscuits with Potato
Tea Biscuits with Potato
1/4 cup hot riced potato 1/4 cup shortening 1 teaspoon sugar 1 teaspoon salt 1/2 cake yeast 1 cup scalded milk 4 cups flour 1 egg white, slightly beaten Beat together potato, shortening, sugar and salt. When the milk is lukewarm, add the yeast cake dissolved in 1/2 cup water. When the yeast is dissolved combine with potato mixture. Add part of the flour slowly, beating constantly, then the white of egg, then more flour, until stiff enough to knead. Knead until smooth, return to mixing bowl and let rise; cut the sponge down, let rise the second time, shape into small biscuits; let rise to double the bulk. Bake in a quick oven 15 minutes. These are excellent to use for croustades. If set at 10 A.M. it will be ready to shape and bake for tea.
A yeast-raised potato roll rather than a chemically leavened biscuit, timed so that dough set mid-morning is on the table for afternoon tea. The instructions are complete; only the units and the oven need translating.
- "Quick oven"Roughly 400-425F. Fifteen minutes suits small rolls at that heat; pull them when the tops are deep gold and the bottoms sound hollow.
- Half a yeast cakeThe common household compressed cake was about 0.6 oz, though other sizes were sold; on that basis half a cake is roughly 1 teaspoon of active dry or instant yeast. Dissolve active dry in the half cup of water called for; instant can go straight into the flour.
- Riced potatoPress a hot boiled russet through a ricer or food mill, do not mash with butter or milk. A quarter cup packs lightly; one medium potato yields more than enough. The starch helps keep the rolls soft longer than a plain milk dough.
- Scalded milkWith unpasteurised milk, scalding served to destroy bacteria, and was also held to prevent the milk slackening the dough. With pasteurized milk you can simply warm it to lukewarm, about 105F, and skip the boil.
- Temperature disciplineThe hinge of the recipe: the potato mixture and milk must both be lukewarm before the yeast meets them. Hot riced potato beaten with shortening may still be too warm, so let it cool to lukewarm before combining.
- Flour quantity is a target, not a ruleFour cups is the outside figure. Add the last cup a few tablespoons at a time and stop when the dough is stiff enough to knead but still slightly tacky.
- "Cut the sponge down"This means deflate the risen dough in the bowl, not to cut it into pieces. First rise about an hour in a warm room, second rise about 45 minutes, then shape and proof to double, roughly 30-40 minutes.
- Egg whiteOnly the white goes in, beaten slightly, which tightens the crumb without the richness of a whole egg. The yolk is left over.
- Yield and croustadesExpect about 18 to 24 small biscuits from this dough. For croustades, bake them a little larger, cut off the tops, hollow out the crumb and dry the shells in a slow oven before filling with creamed fish, sweetbreads or mushrooms.
Potato in bread dough was standard household practice long before it was explained: the cooked starch holds water, feeds the yeast, and yields a softer, longer-keeping crumb, which is why potato rolls and potato-water sponges appear all through nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American baking. What dates this particular version is its clock. The note that dough set at ten in the morning will be ready to shape and bake for tea belongs to a household where someone was present all day and the afternoon tea table was a fixed event, and the suggestion to turn the same rolls into croustades reflects an economy of effort typical of period menu books, where one dough was expected to serve breakfast, tea and a creamed entree.