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Maryland Biscuit

A biscuit made with flour, lard, salt, and cold water, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Maryland Biscuit

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the dough

  1. In a large bowl, mix the flour, lard, and salt.

  2. Gradually add cold water to form a very stiff dough.

  3. Knead the dough for about 30 minutes until it becomes white and blisters.

Shape and bake

  1. Break off pieces of even size and shape them into biscuits.

  2. Press the center of each biscuit with your thumb and finger, then poke twice with a fork.

  3. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) until golden.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

What each ingredient does

All-purpose flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the stiff dough its structure.
Lard
Adds fat that shortens the gluten and gives the biscuit a tender, flaky bite.

The step that matters

Kneading the dough for about 30 minutes. Long kneading develops gluten strongly, which makes the stiff dough tough and dense rather than tender. Kneading until the dough turns white and blisters is the visible sign the dough has been worked enough, so stop when it looks that way.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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