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Planked Biscuits
Spread biscuit dough 1-inch thick on a plank or a piece of birch or other bark, and set close to hot coals. After it is brown and crusty, pry it off, set it up before the fire, and bake the other side.
You are less likely to make your biscuit "sad" in pulling it off if you flour the spot well first and tie the dough on with a string.
A campfire quick bread that uses a board as both baking sheet and reflector. The whole method depends on radiant heat, not flame contact, so the plank is set beside the coals rather than over them.
- Choose the plank carefullyUse untreated hardwood — oak, maple, or the cedar planks sold for grilling — or a slab of green birch bark as written. Never use pressure-treated, painted, plywood or glued lumber, and avoid pitchy conifers such as pine and spruce, which weep resin into the dough.
- "Sad" breadIn older usage a sad loaf is one that has fallen and gone heavy and damp in the middle. Here it means the dough collapsing or tearing when you lever it off the board, which is why the plank is floured and the dough tied on.
- Biscuit doughThe recipe gives no formula. A plain baking-powder dough of the period would be flour, baking powder, salt, a little fat and enough milk or water to make a soft, workable mass. Handle it as little as possible and get it to the fire before the leavening spends itself.
- Heat managementThe recipe says only to set the plank close to hot coals, angled so the face of the dough takes the radiant heat. Flame will scorch the crust before the centre sets, so keep the board beside the coals rather than over them and move it back if it begins to smoke heavily.
- TimingThe recipe gives no times. The first side is done when it is browned and crusty and firm enough to hold together as you pry it loose; the second side should go faster because the bread is already hot through.
- The stringA string or two run around board and dough keeps a soft dough from sagging off as it warms. Do not use synthetic twine. The recipe pairs the tying with flouring the spot well first, and treats both as needed to get the biscuit off without spoiling it.
- Testing and yieldTesting -- A 1-inch slab is done when a splinter or skewer comes out clean and the loaf sounds hollow tapped underneath.
- Oven equivalentThe same dough, cut into rounds, bakes in 12 to 15 minutes at 450F. A plank in a home oven cannot do the one-sided radiant job it does at a fire, so treat this as a fireside method.
Plank baking is one of the oldest ways of making bread without a vessel: a flat stone, a slab of bark or a split board leaned toward the coals turns the fire's radiant heat into a one-sided oven. Versions turn up wherever there is open-fire cookery — the New England johnnycake board, and the fish-and-bread planking practised by woodsmen and guides in the Northeast, who often credited the technique to Indigenous cooks. Birch bark is specified because it peels in broad sheets, resists burning long enough to do the job, and carries no resin into the food. The dough here, leavened with baking powder, depends on a product that would have been unavailable to any cook before the middle of the nineteenth century.