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Raised Biscuit
Take one pint of bread dough; onehalf teaspoon salt; two tablespoons butter; one egg. Work all well together and knead in sufficient flour to shape. Form into medium-sized biscuit and bake five or seven in a circular baking-pan.
This is a shortcut roll built on dough already raised for a loaf, enriched with butter and egg. The original assumes you have bread dough working on the back of the stove and know how long a second rise takes; both of those need spelling out.
- A pint of bread doughMeasured by volume in the bowl; depending on how much gas is in it, a pint of risen white dough weighs somewhere in the region of 12 to 16 oz. Any plain lean dough works, taken after its first rise and before shaping.
- The hinge: let them rise againThe recipe omits it, but working in butter, egg and extra flour knocks much of the gas out. Shaped biscuit will want a second proof, roughly 45 minutes to an hour in a warm room, until visibly puffed, or they risk baking dense.
- Flour "sufficient to shape"The egg and butter loosen the dough considerably. Expect to add 1/2 to 1 cup, no more than needed to stop it sticking to the hands; over-flouring gives a dry, bready crumb rather than a tender one.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given. Something in the region of 400F for 15 to 20 minutes, until well browned on top, suits an enriched dough of this kind.
- The circular panFive or seven biscuit set close in a round tin will touch as they rise, so the sides stay soft and they pull apart. An 8- or 9-inch cake tin or skillet does the job.
- ButterHave it soft rather than melted so it works evenly into the dough. Salted butter is fine; drop the added half teaspoon of salt to a generous pinch if you use it.
- YieldAs the recipe says, five or seven biscuit to the pan, at roughly 2 to 3 oz each. They are best within a few hours of baking.
Raised biscuit sit between bread and the quick, baking-powder biscuit that came to dominate American tables after the 1860s. The word had largely been claimed by the chemically leavened quick bread, which is why this one is labelled "raised." Before chemical leavens were cheap and reliable, a cook with a batch of bread going could pinch off part of it, enrich it with butter and egg, and have soft rolls for supper with no separate ferment to start. Butterick's cook book, published by the pattern company for a mass household audience around the turn of the twentieth century, is full of this kind of economy: recipes that assume a bread day already in progress and simply redirect part of the work. The technique survives in dinner rolls and in the Southern habit of enriching leftover dough, and it is the same principle behind the older English "bun" made from bread sponge.