Home › Quick Breads, Griddle Cakes and Waffles › Baking-Powder Biscuit
Baking-Powder Biscuit
2 cups flour 4 teaspoons baking-powder 1 teaspoon salt 2 tablespoons shortening 3/4 cup liquid (all milk or half milk and half water) Mix dry ingredients and sift twice. Work in fat with tips of the fingers, or cut in with two knives. Add the liquid gradually, mixing with a knife to a soft dough. Owing to differences in flours, it is impossible to determine the exact amount of liquid. Toss on a floured board, pat and roll lightly to one-half inch in thickness. Shape with a biscuit-cutter. Bake in hot oven (450 degrees-460 degrees F.) twelve to fifteen minutes.
A plain 1920s-30s baking-powder biscuit, written for cooks who expected to judge dough by feel rather than by exact measure. Almost nothing here needs changing; the few notes below cover flour, fat and yield.
- The hinge: keep the dough soft and barely handledThe instruction to mix with a knife and "toss" on the board is the whole technique. Work the dough as little as possible once the liquid goes in, or gluten develops and the biscuits turn tough and bready rather than flaky.
- Liquid will run higher than 3/4 cupLiquid may run higher than 3/4 cup -- The recipe's own caveat about flours still applies, and a modern all-purpose flour may take somewhat more liquid than the recipe allows. Add the last of it a spoonful at a time and stop when the dough is soft.
- Baking powderFour teaspoons to 2 cups flour is a little more than the tablespoon most modern biscuit recipes call for. With today's double-acting powder, a tablespoon is enough and leaves less of a metallic aftertaste.
- ShorteningIn recipes of this period shortening generally meant lard or a hydrogenated vegetable fat. Cold butter cut into small cubes works and tastes better; keep it cold so it stays in flakes rather than blending into the flour.
- Sifting twiceThis was to break up lumps and distribute the leavening evenly. With modern flour and powder, one thorough whisking in the bowl does the same job.
- Oven450F is correct as written and should not be lowered. Bake on the upper-middle rack; 12 to 15 minutes gives risen, browned tops.
- YieldAbout twelve biscuits from a 2-inch cutter, or eight to nine from a 2 1/2-inch. Cut straight down without twisting, and set them close together on the pan if you want soft sides, apart if you want crisp ones.
The baking-powder biscuit is the American answer to a problem that once required either yeast and hours of waiting or a beaten batter: chemical leavening, commercially available from the middle of the nineteenth century onward, let a cook put hot bread on the table in under half an hour. By the time this book appeared, the formula had settled into the proportions given here and was treated as a base recipe rather than a novelty, the starting point for shortcakes, cobbler tops, dumplings and drop biscuits alike. The frank admission that "it is impossible to determine the exact amount of liquid" is a period signature, from a moment when recipes had adopted standardized cup-and-spoon measures but still assumed a cook who could recognize the right dough by hand.