6/19/2023 0 Comments Chicken in a biscuitIn eating, the advantage of the biscuit over a slice of bread was that it was harder, and hence kept its shape when wiping up gravy in the popular combination biscuits and gravy. With no leavening agents except the bitter-tasting pearlash available, beaten biscuits were laboriously beaten and folded to incorporate air into the dough which expanded when heated in the oven causing the biscuit to rise. Cooks created a cheaply produced addition for their meals that required no yeast, which was expensive and difficult to store. The biscuit emerged as a distinct food type in the early 19th century, before the American Civil War. These were first introduced in 1588 to the rations of ships and found their way into the New World by the 1700s at the latest. A very similar practice was also popular once with the Royal Navy as hard, flour-based biscuits would keep for long journeys at sea but would also become so difficult to chew that they had to be softened up. Most were not wealthy men and women, and so it was a source of cheap nutrition. Įarly European settlers in the United States brought with them a simple, easy style of cooking, most often based on ground wheat and warmed with gravy. It is interesting that these soft biscuits are common to Guernsey, and that the term biscuit as applied to a soft product was retained in these places, and in America, whereas in England it has completely died out. The differences in the usage of biscuit in the English speaking world are remarked on by Elizabeth David in English Bread and Yeast Cookery. The soft bread is called a biscuit in North America, and the hard baked goods are called biscuits in the UK. The long development over time and place explains why the word biscuit can, depending upon the context and the speaker's English dialect, refer to very different baked goods.Īs the English language developed, different baked goods ended up sharing the same name. īiscuits developed from hardtack, which was first made from only flour and water, with later first lard and then baking powder being added. Like other forms of bread, a biscuit is often served with butter or other condiments, flavored with other ingredients, or combined with other types of food to make sandwiches or other dishes.īiscuits, soda breads, cornbread, and similar breads are all considered quick breads, meaning that they do not need time for the dough to rise before baking. It is made with baking powder as a leavening agent rather than yeast, and at times is called a baking powder biscuit to differentiate it from other types. In the United States, a biscuit is a variety of baked bread with a firm, dry exterior and a soft, crumbly interior.
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