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Dessert

Breakfast Biscuit

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Breakfast Biscuit

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the dough

  1. Sift the flour and baking powder together three times.

  2. Rub the lard thoroughly into the flour.

  3. Mix with cold water to form a soft dough.

  4. Roll out and cut into biscuits.

Bake

  1. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) for twenty minutes.

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

Flour
Forms the structure of the biscuit as the dough sets in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the heat, helping the biscuits rise and become light.
Lard
Coats flour particles to tenderise the crumb and add a flaky texture.
Cold water
Hydrates the flour to bind the dough, and its coldness keeps the fat from melting early.

The step that matters

Rub the lard thoroughly into the flour. Fat rubbed evenly through flour coats the starch and gluten strands, limiting toughness. Unevenly distributed fat leaves pockets that cause uneven texture and flakiness.

“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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