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Shooting the Biscuits Through the Campfire
When is biscuit dough done enough to eat? When you can stick a splinter, or a straw, into it and the splinter stick a splinter, or a straw, into it and the splinter comes out clean without a bit of dough sticking to it.
BISCUITS-ON-A-STICK (ALSO KNOWN AS TWISTERS) Make according to recipe for Biscuits (see recipe) or stir up biscuit-mix, using a little less liquid than is required biscuit-mix , using a little less liquid than is required for oven biscuits . Form a long roll the thickness of 2 fingers or less , making sure you don't squeeze out the baking powder bubbles while handling it. Cut a good-tastinggreen stick of finger size, peel it clean, heat one end of it, dust that end with flour, and twist dough in a spiral around it. Poke the other end of your stick in the ground or hold it in your hand, and slant it so the dough is only a few inches away from a bed of hot coals. Keep the stick turning as the dough rises and a crust sets on the outside, then finish cooking it a little farther away from the fire until it is lightly browned on all sides. Try the splinter test after 10 minutes, or just pull the twister off and if it isn't to your liking, split it and toast the inside. Never eat uncooked dough, even in camp. Your twister will be sweet and good if you haven't chosen a bitter stickbe sure to taste it before you begin, or choose sassafras, hickory, apple, birch, or maple.
A campfire twister is just biscuit dough wound around a stick and baked by radiant heat. The whole thing hinges on cooking it beside the coals rather than over flame, and on the stick you choose.
- Stiffer dough than usualHold back a little of the liquid, as the recipe directs. Oven-consistency dough sags and drops off the stick as it warms.
- Which woods are safeSassafras, hickory, apple, birch and maple are the traditional choices and all taste mild to sweet. Avoid wild cherry, yew, oleander, buckeye, rhododendron and laurel, all of which carry toxic compounds in bark and green wood. Peel a sliver and taste it; anything bitter, soapy or resinous goes back in the woods.
- Coals, not flameWait until the fire has burned down to a grey-glowing bed. Direct flame chars the spiral before the centre sets, which is what produces a twister that is black outside and raw inside.
- Heating the stick firstThe recipe has you warm the peeled end before dusting it with flour. No reason is given; a warm, floured stick presumably grips the dough better than a cold wet one.
- Thickness and turningA spiral no more than two fingers thick, as the recipe specifies, cooks through. Keep the stick turning steadily while the dough rises and the crust sets.
- TimingThe recipe has you try the splinter test after 10 minutes; the test, not the clock, is the judge. If a straw comes out gummy, split the twister and toast the cut faces over the coals, as the recipe suggests.
- A note on baking powderThe recipe warns against squeezing out the baking powder bubbles while handling the roll. Handle it gently and get it onto the stick; overworked dough bakes dense.
Bread wound on a stick and baked at the edge of a fire turns up wherever people cooked outdoors with a stiff dough: the Scottish and Scandinavian traditions of spit-baked bread, the Central European chimney cake, and the stick bread of American scouting manuals, where "twister" and "doughboy" both appear as names. The reference to biscuit mix places this version after commercial mixes became a camp staple. The insistence on tasting the stick first is the older knowledge underneath: the cook had to be able to identify a tree, and a bitter twig ruined the bread.