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Baking-Powder Biscuit
Pass through the sieve two or three times four cups of flour, one teaspoonful of salt, and, for each cup of flour, two level teaspoonfuls of bakingpowder. With the tips of the fingers work into the flour one-third a cup of butter. When the mixture looks like meal, mix in gradually nearly one pint of milk, cutting the dough with a knife until well mixed. When it is of a consistency to handle, turn out on to a well-floured board, toss with the knife in the flour, then pat out into a sheet half an inch thick, and cut into rounds. Let the heat of the oven be moderate at first, and increase after the dough has risen. Bake about fifteen minutes.
A plain baking-powder biscuit of the sort a chafing-dish book keeps on hand for splitting and filling. The proportions are sound; the oven direction is the one thing modern practice has reversed.
- The oven, reversedThe instruction to start moderate and increase belongs to solid-fuel ranges, whose heat was managed by damper and fuel rather than held at a set point. Modern practice reverses it: biscuits want steady high heat from the moment they go in — 450F for 12 to 15 minutes — so the baking powder and steam lift the dough before the crumb sets.
- MeasurementsA pint of milk is 2 cups; "nearly one pint" means hold back a few tablespoons and add only what the flour takes. One-third cup of butter is 5 tablespoons plus a teaspoon.
- Baking powderTwo level teaspoons per cup of flour gives 8 teaspoons total, generous by current standards. Period powders were a mix of fast tartrate and slower phosphate and alum types; modern double-acting powder is stronger and more consistent, and 1 to 1½ teaspoons per cup is plenty. The full amount may leave a faint metallic tang.
- FlourHousehold flour of the period was often softer and lower in protein than today's all-purpose, though hard-wheat flours were also on sale. A cup of all-purpose cut with a few tablespoons of cake flour, or Southern-style soft wheat flour, gives the tender crumb the recipe assumes.
- Cold butter, cold hands"When the mixture looks like meal" is the whole technique. Keep the butter cold and work only until the mixture is mealy; the fat still distinct in the flour steams in the oven and makes the layers.
- Cutting rather than kneadingThe knife is doing deliberate work here — it mixes without warming or overworking the dough. Handle the dough as little as possible after it comes together, and press scraps together rather than re-rolling them hard.
- Cutting the roundsPush the cutter straight down without twisting; a twisted edge seals and the biscuit rises lopsided. Half an inch is thin by modern habit and suits sandwich work, where you want a biscuit that splits cleanly and does not overwhelm the filling.
- YieldRoughly 35 to 40 biscuits from a 2-inch cutter, fewer and taller from a 2½-inch. They are at their best within an hour of baking.
Chemically leavened biscuits took over American home baking in the second half of the nineteenth century, as commercial baking powders displaced the older combination of saleratus and sour milk and made a quick bread possible at any hour without a yeast sponge set the night before. That speed suited the genre of informal suppers, luncheons and after-theatre entertaining done largely at the table, and a hot split biscuit was the obvious vehicle for creamed chicken, potted ham or any of the savoury fillings the book supplies. The instruction to raise the oven heat partway through is a small fossil of the coal range, whose temperature was managed by damper and fuel rather than a dial.