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Biscuits for Coffee
Use a level teaspoonful of baking powder with each half pound of flour requisite and a little sugar and butter, making a rather stiff paste by adding some egg beaten up in a little milk. Work it well until quite smooth and then roll it out thin, cut it into biscuits three inches long by an inch and a half wide, perforate the tops with a docker and place in a moderately quick oven, baking to a yellow color. When done remove, and serve when cold.
These are biscuits in the British sense — thin, crisp, lightly sweetened crackers to eat with coffee, not American soda biscuits. The recipe gives proportions rather than a full ingredient list, so a little judgment is required.
- The hinge: roll thin, bake paleThe texture depends entirely on thickness and colour. Roll to about 1/8 inch or less and pull the tray the moment the biscuits turn straw-yellow at the edges; any browning past that gives a hard, faintly bitter biscuit rather than a crisp one.
- Half a pound of flourAbout 1¾ cups, or 225 g. One level teaspoon of baking powder per half pound is a light hand by modern standards, which is correct here — these should barely rise.
- "A little sugar and butter"Genuinely unspecified. A workable reading for half a pound of flour is something in the region of 2 tablespoons each of sugar and butter; more butter makes them short and tender, more sugar makes them spread and colour faster.
- The egg and milkOne egg beaten into enough milk to bring the dough together — start with 3 to 4 tablespoons of milk and add cautiously. The dough should be stiff enough to roll without sticking, closer to pastry than to a drop batter.
- DockerA spiked roller or pricking tool used in bakeries to perforate cracker dough so it does not blister or dome in the oven. A fork works; go right through the dough to the bench.
- Moderately quick ovenRoughly 375 to 400°F. At that heat thin biscuits are done in 7 to 10 minutes, so watch them from six minutes on.
- "Work it well until quite smooth"Unusual advice for a tender dough, but deliberate — developing some gluten is what gives this style its snap. Knead briefly on the bench until the surface is even, then roll at once.
- Yield and keepingHalf a pound of flour gives roughly two to three dozen biscuits at the size specified. Cooling fully before serving is not fussiness: they crisp as they cool, and they keep a week in a tin.
Biscuits like these belong to the European coffee table rather than the American breakfast one, and the vocabulary points that way -- a docker is bakery equipment, and cutting the dough into neat three-inch fingers is a bakeshop habit rather than a home one. Oscar Tschirky was maitre d'hotel at the Waldorf, and much of his book reads as professional kitchen practice written down in proportions rather than recipes: so much baking powder per half pound of flour, sugar and butter to taste, bake to a colour. The instruction to serve them cold lets them crisp as they cool; a thin, dry, barely sweet biscuit of this kind was one accompaniment to after-dinner coffee.