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Oven Breads
BAKING POWDER BISCUITS 2 CUPS SIFTED FLOUR 4 TEASPOONS BAKING POWDER 1/2 TEASPOON SALT 3 TABLESPOONS FAT I TEASPOON BUTTER 3/4 CUP MILK (ABOUT) Sift flour, baking powder and salt together. Break fat and butter into little pieces, drop into flour, and work together with fingers or fork to the size and appearance of coarse grits. Gradually add milk (or water mixed with enough evaporated milk to barely whiten it). Use fork for mixing, and drop the liquid into the dry spots until well distributed and the dough will form a ball. If it is too wet it won't roll nicely, and if too dry biscuits will be too dry also. Handle as little as possible. Pat or roll out 1/2-3/4 inch thick on a floured board, cut with biscuit cutter, tin cup, discarded baking powder tin or anything handy, lay in buttered pan and bake 12-15 minutes at 450°. Yields 12-15 biscuits.
In the deep woods camp you will want to take along the separate ingredients in order to do as many things with them as possible. So you will mix your own biscuits. But biscuit-mix, ready for the addition of only the liquid ingredient, is advised for short-haul camping where all sorts of supplies are plentiful, or for the occasions when biscuits are wanted only to furnish an outdoor touch.
DROP BISCUITS Make like baking powder biscuits, but use 1 full cup milk, or liquid. The dough should be thick enough so it can scarcely be stirred, but not thick enough to roll. Since flour varies, use more or less liquid to make the proper consistency. Drop from heaped teaspoon onto buttered pan, leaving 1-inch space between biscuits. Bake as above. You don't even need a table, let alone a rolling pin, to make these.
A standard mid-century camp biscuit, written for cooks who might be working on a plank rather than a counter. Nothing here needs correcting, but a few of the quantities and assumptions repay a second look.
- The hinge: heat first, handle leastThe oven must be fully up to 450F before the pan goes in, or the baking powder spends its lift before the crumb sets. Combined with the instruction to handle the dough as little as possible, that is the whole difference between a tall biscuit and a hard disc.
- "Fat" means solid fatIn a book of this vintage that is lard, shortening or bacon drippings. Any of them works; butter alone works too, at 3 tablespoons plus the teaspoon. It must be cold and stay in visible pieces, which is what the "coarse grits" description is telling you.
- The teaspoon of butterOne teaspoon in 2 cups of flour is there for flavor, not structure. If you are using butter as the main fat it is redundant; if you are using lard or drippings it is worth keeping.
- Baking powder is on the high sideFour teaspoons to 2 cups of flour is 2 teaspoons per cup, above current practice of roughly 1 to 1.5 teaspoons per cup. At that level you may taste a faint metallic edge, and 2 to 3 teaspoons total will rise perfectly well.
- Whitened waterThe alternative liquid, water with enough evaporated milk to barely tint it, is a camp economy from the days before shelf-stable milk in cartons. Reconstituted dry milk does the same job now, and buttermilk gives a better flavor if you add a scant 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda with it.
- Cooking without an ovenFor campfire work, a cast-iron Dutch oven with coals above and below holds roughly 425 to 450F with a lidful of coals and a ring beneath. A reflector oven set close to a steady bed of flame does the same. Either way, check at 10 minutes.
- Yield and servingThe recipe claims 12 to 15 biscuits, though the size depends on whatever cutter, tin cup or baking powder tin you use. Drop biscuits from a heaped teaspoon will run small; a heaped tablespoon gives a more useful size. They are best hot, so time them to the meal.
- Drop biscuit liquidThe full cup of milk gives a batter that barely moves under the spoon. Flour absorbency genuinely varies, so add the last of the liquid by eye rather than by measure, as the original says.