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Sweet Potato Biscuit (Delight of Georgia boys)
Sweet potato biscuit, the delight of Georgia boys and girls, are considered equally toothsome by northern lads and lassies. The recipe given by a southern cook is as follows: Two cupfuls of flour, one cupful of boiled and mashed sweet potato, one tablespoonful of sugar, one teaspoonful of salt, one tablespoonful of butter, one-quarter teaspoonful of soda, and enough buttermilk to make a soft dough. Roll and cut with a biscuit cutter and bake in a quick oven.
A workable Southern biscuit as written, though the leavening and liquid both need judgment. Two notes matter most: the soda is low for the amount of flour, and the potato should be warm and smooth when it goes in.
- Quick ovenBake at 425-450F. Biscuits want the high heat to set the crust before the interior dries out; 12-15 minutes for a half-inch cut.
- The leavening is thinA quarter teaspoon of soda against two cups of flour and a cup of potato gives a dense, scone-like biscuit. If your flour is plain, expect a heavy crumb unless you add about two teaspoons of baking powder.
- Buttermilk is the acidThe soda needs the buttermilk's acidity to work. Modern cultured buttermilk is reliably acidic, where the liquid left from churning varied a good deal; either way, do not use sweet milk here.
- How much liquid"Enough buttermilk to make a soft dough" usually lands between a quarter and a half cup, depending on how wet the potato is. Add it in splashes; sweet potato holds a lot of moisture and an overwet dough will spread rather than rise.
- The potatoBoiled and mashed, with nothing seasoned into it; passing it through a ricer or sieve will take out fibers and lumps. Use it warm so it blends with the butter; cold mashed potato stiffens the dough and forces you to overwork it. Roughly one medium sweet potato yields a cup.
- CuttingRoll to about half an inch and press the cutter straight down without twisting. Gather and re-roll scraps once at most.
- YieldAbout a dozen two-inch biscuits. Best within an hour of baking; the potato keeps them moist but they turn gummy by the next day.
Sweet potato biscuits belong to a broad Southern habit of stretching wheat flour, which was expensive and often imported into the region, with whatever starchy vegetable was already cooked and on hand. Sweet potatoes stored well through winter in a straw-lined mound or a cellar, and leftover mashed potato from supper became breakfast bread the next morning; the same logic produced white potato rolls, pumpkin biscuits and cornmeal batter breads. The framing here is telling: the recipe is presented as one "given by a southern cook," and the appeal to Georgia boys and girls versus northern lads and lassies is the kind of regional-color writing that filled American cookbooks and magazines when Southern cooking was being packaged as picturesque for readers elsewhere. The quarter teaspoon of soda points to a period of transitional baking: chemical leaveners were increasingly available, but recipes still carried habits from the days of saleratus and sour milk.