Biscuits

Happy Friday!

This week’s essay is part two of my piece on immigration.

The recipe for the week is biscuits, a scrumptious southern staple.

I can’t think of many things better than a homemade biscuit – so simple and comforting, yet so indulgent. Biscuits have kind of a Proustian effect on me, since my mom always made them growing up (it goes without saying, hers are better than mine). This type of recipe exemplifies good cooking – combining a handful of commonplace ingredients to create something completely different, and completely delicious. I have said that I’m not a baker, and I’m not, but there are a few baked goods that even I try my hand at. Biscuits are one of them (along with corn bread and the occasional cookie). I make my biscuits pretty often – they’re a great lazy weekend breakfast – so I feel confident that anybody will get good results with this recipe.  

Americans who have been to the UK may have noticed that their biscuits are much different than ours. The closest thing to an American biscuit in the UK, apparently, is a scone which, as far as I can tell, is a sweet biscuit. British biscuits, on the other hand, are what we Americans call cookies.

The same situation obtains in France and Italy. In fact, biscuit is a French word meaning “twice cooked” (bis = twice, cuit = cooked), and today in France, it’s the generic term for “cookie.” Similarly, when Italians use their version of the word, biscotto (plural, biscotti), they are referring generically to any cookie-type item. In a way then, Americans use the word “biscotti” more accurately than Italians do (although we only use the plural form), since the specific cookie we’re thinking of is actually baked twice – first as a loaf, then again after the loaf has been cut into logs, so that each piece can crisp up. The items that Americans call biscotti, Italians usually refer to as cantuccini, or less commonly, biscotti di Prato. Prato is the Tuscan city where a particular type of biscotti, made with almonds, originated. To this day, on the sign of the most famous biscotto baker in Prato, Biscottificio Antonio Mattei, there is written below: “Manufacturers of cantuccini”. Cantuccini originally referred to one type of biscotti. The term is a diminutive form of the Italian word canto, which means “corner, or side”, and came to mean “a piece of bread”. Of course, in Spain and Latin America, there are also bizcochos, which are various baked items, some cookie-like, some pastry-like, some cake-like.

All of these words come from the medieval Latin word biscoctus, which also means “twice cooked”. That medieval item apparently resembled modern-day biscotti, both in form and preparation. The origins of the biscoctus lie in ancient Rome and its storied legions, for whom twice-baked items were particularly valued, as they were less perishable, and therefore more useful on military campaigns.

According to this source, the term “biscuit” did not appear in America until the mid-19th century. There were all sorts of crispy, thin, baked items here since the late-18th century, however. But those items were generally referred to as crackers. It’s unclear where the term “cracker” comes from, but maybe it has something to do with what crackers do when you bite into them. Crackers were popular in the 1800s, both here and abroad, and were also known as hard tack, and as pilot, or ship bread, since they could keep for months at sea. After 1855, sweetened English “biscuits” made their way to the States, and soon, American companies were making their own versions. In 1898, The New York Biscuit Company and The America Biscuit and Manufacturing Company, who had been bitter rivals, merged to form the National Biscuit Company. That company today is known as Nabisco, a combination of the three words.

The term “cookies” comes from the Dutch. When they controlled New York, or Nieuw Amsterdam as it was then called, the Dutch enjoyed baked treats called koekjes, meaning “little cakes” (koek = cake, -je = little). After the English won control of the colony in 1674, and English began to be spoken there, the word koekje took on a more Anglicized sound, eventually becoming “cookie.” So why did “cookie” beat out “biscuit” here? And why, for that matter, did “biscuit” come to mean savory scone? The record is unclear, but apparently, today’s American “biscuit” comes from the “beaten biscuit,” which was a simple baked good, kind of like hard tack, made of flour, lard, and milk or water, originating in the mid-Atlantic. Since there was no leavening agent, the dough was beaten to make it rise a bit. But with the advent of leavening agents like baking soda and baking powder, the tough, beaten biscuits presumably evolved into the light, fluffy biscuits we know today.

There are probably a million different permutations of biscuit recipes in America. You can use different fats, like lard, shortening, or butter. You can use different liquids, like buttermilk, cream, or milk. In fact, if you don’t have milk or butter, but you have heavy cream, you can end up with a very similar result. You can also add extra flavors, like cheese or herbs.

But I’m kind of a purist when it comes to biscuits. I use all-purpose flour, butter, and milk, along with baking powder and salt. I’ll admit that shortening results in a slightly more delicate texture than butter, but in my opinion, there’s no better ingredient in the world than butter, and that’s what I want to taste here. I’m also trying not to consume vegetable oil, because I think it’s less healthy than natural fats and oils. And in the spirit of honesty, you probably get a slightly better taste with buttermilk than regular milk, but I never have buttermilk on hand, and I never plan on making biscuits. That’s the great thing about this recipe – you probably already have all the ingredients! And if you’re so disposed, you can finagle a pretty close approximation to that tangy buttermilk taste with any of a few other ingredients that you might have in your fridge, like sour cream, yogurt, or lemon juice – just add a tablespoon or so to the milk and mix it all together before adding it to the dry ingredients.

There are a few other tricks to making a good biscuit. Since it’s like a short bread, I find that treating it kind of like pie dough helps. So I use cold butter, and I try to work fairly quickly, first cutting the butter into the dry ingredients with the back of a fork until I get kind of a “wet sand” texture. Experts like my mom will tell you that, as with pie dough, you should avoid overworking the dough. Once you add the liquid, bring the dough together and move on. This is definitely not something that should be kneaded. The more you handle the wet dough, the tougher the biscuits will be. That’s why I don’t go to much effort trying to shape the biscuits – I either cut the dough into six pieces or scoop six pieces out with a spoon, then lightly roll each piece into a rough ball. The biscuits will rise unevenly in the oven, so perfect spheres at the pre-baked stage would be wasted anyway.

The other bit of skill involved is judging when they’re done. Biscuits bake from the bottom up, so it’s easy to think they’re not ready when actually the bottom is already overbaked. Basically, when you start seeing some color on top, they’re pretty much done – maybe give it just a couple more minutes. There’s not a lot of room for error though, because it’s a very thin line between cooking the biscuit through and overbaking the bottom. You can try testing doneness by sticking a toothpick into the middle of one – if it comes out without any crumbs stuck to it, you should be good to go. As far as getting the top of the biscuits to brown as much as the bottom, I’m open to suggestions. I’ve tried adding sugar to the recipe, or brushing melted butter on top before baking, but neither made any difference. It’s a purely cosmetic problem though – this recipe produces a nice, crispy top.

When it comes to how to eat biscuits, I’m also a purist; I think they’re best plain or with a little pat of butter on top. Others prefer to take it in a sweet direction, adding more sugar to the recipe so that they’re essentially scones, or topping them with syrup or jam. Of course, white gravy goes great with biscuits. Maybe I’ll do a chicken fried steak and white gravy recipe at some point. 😊

This recipe makes six medium-sized biscuits. Two usually fill me up, but if I’m really hungry, I can eat three. One biscuit is a perfect accompaniment to a larger breakfast or a southern-fried dinner.

Ingredients

2 cups all-purpose flour, plus 3 tbsps. for dusting

2 ½ tsps. baking powder

1 tsp. salt (if using unsalted butter – if using salted butter, use ½ tsp.)

6 tbsps. butter, plus a bit more to grease the baking sheet

~1 cup milk (you might need a bit more or a bit less)

1 tbsp. sour cream, yogurt, or lemon juice (optional)

Total prep/cooking time: 30 minutes

Servings: 6 biscuits/3 servings

Instructions

1.      Set the oven to 450 degrees Fahrenheit.

2.      Grease a large baking sheet with butter.

3.      Measure out a cup of milk. If you want to use sour cream, yogurt, or lemon juice, add it now to the milk and stir it so that the mixture is combined.

4.      Put 2 cups of flour, the baking powder, and the salt through a sieve into a large bowl. Mix all the ingredients together so they’re evenly distributed. Put the 3 tablespoons of flour into a small bowl.

5.      Quickly cut the 6 tablespoons of butter into small cubes, and dump them into the bowl. You want the butter to stay as cold as possible. With the back of a fork, work the butter into the dry ingredients for a couple of minutes. Then with your fingers, make sure that the texture of the mixture is kind of like wet sand, with no large clumps of butter remaining.

6.      Make a well in the center of the mixture and pour about 2/3 of the milk in. With a spoon, gently begin stirring to combine everything. If there’s any dryness after the milk has been incorporated, add more – you might even need a bit more than a cup. The biscuit dough will ultimately be pretty wet and sticky, so err on the side of more milk. As the dough comes together, try to fold rather than stir, just to pick up the rest of the dry mixture.

7.      Once all of the ingredients are combined, and you have a sticky mass of dough, you have at least two options. You can either just scoop six evenly-sized biscuits out with a spoon, or you can sprinkle some flour on your working surface to prevent sticking, place the dough on it, and cut six equal pieces with a knife. Each pre-baked biscuit should be a little bit bigger than a golf ball when rolled. You can use the extra flour to dust your hands to prevent sticking, then gently roll each biscuit between your hands into roughly a ball shape. It doesn’t need to be perfect. The rise will be uneven anyway.

8.      Once you roll a biscuit into a ball, place it on the baking sheet.

9.      Bake in the 450-degree oven for 10 minutes, then have a look at the biscuits. If there is any color at all on top of them, they’re almost done. If there’s no color at all on top, you should definitely keep them in the oven for a few more minutes, but keep an eye on them. If the color on top is pretty noticeable, take the biscuits out and stick a toothpick in the middle of one. If no dough is stuck to the toothpick, and the bottom of the biscuits are brown, they’re probably done. If not, put them back in until they are. They might take 15 minutes total.

10. Eat them however you want.