Beaten Biscuit or Cracker 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.
Prepare the dough
Preheat oven to 400°F (200°C).
In a large bowl, combine the flour and salt.
Cut in the lard until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs.
Add enough ice water to hold the dough together.
Knead
Knead the dough for 20 minutes, then let it rest for 20 minutes.
Knead the dough hard for an additional 25 minutes until smooth and soft.
Shape and bake
Roll the dough to about ½ inch thick and cut into biscuit shapes.
Prick each biscuit with a fork before baking.
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
- Flour
- Forms the gluten network that gives the dough its structure once kneaded.
- Lard
- Cut into the flour to add fat, tenderising the biscuits and keeping layers short.
The step that matters
Knead the dough hard for an additional 25 minutes until smooth and soft.. Prolonged kneading develops and toughens the gluten so the dough becomes smooth and elastic. Under-kneading leaves it crumbly, while the rest periods let the gluten relax so it can be worked further.
“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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