Home › Bread, Biscuits, Muffins and Waffles › Baking Powder Biscuits
Baking Powder Biscuits
Sift together three cups flour, one teaspoonful salt and three teaspoonfuls of baking powder. Chop into this with a knife one teaspoonful each of lard and butter, then add gradually about one cup of milk, making a soft dough that can be easily handled. Take on board and knead gently. Cut in small rounds and bake fifteen to twenty minutes in moderately quick oven.
A plain baking-powder biscuit of the early 1900s, written for a cook who already knew what biscuit dough should feel like. Two things need attention: the fat is almost certainly a misprint, and the oven wants to be hotter than "moderately quick" sounds.
- The fat is too little as printedThe fat is very low as printed -- one teaspoonful each of lard and butter for three cups of flour is about a third of an ounce in total, which will give a harder, more bready roll than a rich biscuit. Many recipes of this type call for tablespoonfuls rather than teaspoonfuls, so a misprint is possible; for a tender biscuit use two to three tablespoons of each, or four to five tablespoons of butter alone.
- "Moderately quick oven"Period oven tables put this somewhere in the region of 375-425F. Modern biscuit practice tends to go hotter, up to 450F, so that the leavening and the steam lift the dough before the crust sets. At the upper end of the range expect the shorter end of the recipe's fifteen to twenty minutes.
- Keep everything coldThe instruction to chop the fat in with a knife is the hinge of the recipe. The fat should stay in visible pieces rather than blending into the flour; those pieces melt in the oven and make the layers. Cold butter, cold milk, and quick hands.
- "Knead gently"Means five or six folds, not a bread kneading. Overworking develops gluten and gives a tough, close-grained biscuit. The dough should still look slightly rough when you stop.
- Baking powderPowders sold around 1900 were commonly single-acting, releasing most of their gas as soon as they were wetted rather than again in the oven. Three teaspoons to three cups of flour is still within the normal range today, but the dough should go into the oven promptly once mixed.
- Milk quantity"About one cup" is deliberately vague because flour absorbency varies. Hold back a couple of tablespoons and add them only if the dough will not come together; you want it soft and slightly sticky, not wet.
- Cutting"small rounds" is not defined here; about 2 inches across from dough rolled roughly half an inch thick is a reasonable reading. Press the cutter straight down without twisting, which seals the edge and hinders the rise.
- YieldDepends on how thick the dough is rolled; something on the order of eighteen to twenty-four two-inch biscuits. They are best within an hour or two of baking and are noticeably staler the following day.
Baking-powder biscuits belong to the American quick-bread tradition that expanded rapidly once chemical leavening became cheap and reliable in the second half of the nineteenth century; before that a cook wanting bread in half an hour relied on saleratus and sour milk, or on beating air into the dough by hand. The terseness here is typical: the book assumes the reader has watched biscuits made, and gives the proportions rather than the technique.