The Evolution Of The Biscuit - From Potash To Baking Soda - 18th Century Cooking 

White Lily, what other flour can you use for the history of biscuits!

mmm, flour...

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Funny, the kids at White Lilly's Marketing Department, probably had no idea, that bisquits as we know them in America, didn't become common until the 20th Century, when railroads enabled the efficient distribution, therefore more inexpensive wheat flour. Before then, wheat flour was saved for making bread or cakes for special occasions. Before then, Americans mostly ate cornbread, aka, Indian bread. And as Townsends pointed out, baking powder wasn't invented until the 19th century. It likely took awhile to come into common use. Bravo to the Townsend's creative way of accommodating White Lilly, instead of turning down the free flour!

And brand of flour is called *Raid Shadow Legends*

Ryan and John have that wired chemistry that makes great videos.

When you are looking at that many biscuits, that's a very good question to be asking.

Yea!!!!!! Biscuits, while the N W O kills everyone off with graphene, 5 G and death shots! Yummy! WAKE TF UP.

@@lockergr sir this is a wendy's

Yeah... where is the sausage gravy? Makes it harder to hit the like button...

She knew how to just enjoy the little things

Or it was written at a time before industrialized yellow journalism. Newspapers occasionally included good news or DIY tips for their readers at home. Books were costly, and while most people were literate, they didn't have the education industry we have today or the ability to share information on the internet. Sharing tips like this in the newspaper was a great way to communicate knowledge widely and often they might have had columnists who contributed things like this on a variety of topics, depending on the availability of authors.

@@kma3647 You are a thief of joy.

@@kma3647 you are a giver of knowledge

Haha! So true

@@ControversialOpinion why?

@@ControversialOpinion What a controversial opinion

Always enjoy seeing Ryan on the show.

It's gotta be the glasses man

@@ControversialOpinion About what? You no like, you no click.

Agree

Agreed!!

Yes. My mom always made strawberry shortcake with the modern baking powder biscuits, but, you're right, that one would probably be wonderful.

makes sense, it’s a cousin of it IIRC

Exactly what I was thinking!

Mom often made strips of pie crust to use for strawberry short cake. Biscuits, however they turn out (except burnt), make the best bread pudding!

Same energy as me stuffing my face with French fries while watching this before this years ‘meet the teacher’ 😂

Biscuits are the best!

I am hyped for Ryan being hyped for biscuits

@Persnikitty that's exactly why

I see what you did there

This channel is old through and through , that’s why it’s so awesome! Welcome to loving history!!

Ba-dum *ching*

😂

Back in the 80-90s there was a Southern cooking show on PBS. The cook was Nathalie Dupree. She made biscuits the way you described. Rolling the dough into balls, like how you would make yeast rolls. Personally, I think that would be the more utilitarian way to do it bc you don't need to use extra flour and equipment (read: things to wash). Just need a mixing bowl and your hands.

My mom made biscuits that way - pinch off a round, roll between your hands, and pat flat. They're called drop biscuits where I'm from, not sure about elsewhere. That way, you use a single bowl to mix and are probably more economical with the flour as well.

THANKS FOR A GREAT POST!😀

Well thought out. I got frustrated when stores during Christmas would advertise at high prices “mince pie” and I find out it has fillers, but really is just an apple pie with raisin. When I ask if they have minceMEAT pie they look at me confused. I go off upset. So I pulled out great gramma’s recipe and made it last year. I have her late 1800s chopper, which oddly enough google showed me someone was selling just like it for quite a bit. I chopped cooked beef after cooled in a wood bowl with it, until minced. And then sour apples the same. Then added to it the spices, sugar, and raisins, etc. cooked it. And THAT was like home. Who knows how old it is, or how many times it was altered, since her mom was in the temperance movement as a Saturday Adventist, so there is no alcohol but uses apple cider juice? I know my gramma altered it, removed citron and added currants and yellow raisins too. I know that edit so I can make both kinds. But I found out that meat was removed from mincemeat pies in late 1800s in England. Luckily we left England in early 1800s! So in a way we have a step that is lost here still preserved.

My grandmother was also born in 1919 (her name was Geneva)...She had a biscuit recipe similar to this, but, what I always remember is her pie crusts...She would put a pile of flour on the counter, scoop lard (and, later Crisco) with her hand, mix it all up and roll it out right there, no bowls or utensils involved (except a rolling pin)... : )

@@60cmad yep! Mine too! They come out so flakey and delicious! Today they all have sugar in the crust which results in overly too sweet pies. But our grannies knew a sweet pie needed a balanced crust to hold the sweetness and not crumble! My favorite pie recipe was her buttermilk pie! Oh my thinking about it gives me goose bumps on my knee caps ! Yum!!! 😋

That's a real heirloom recipe! Is the flour "self-rising," i.e. does it have baking powder and salt added already? My cookbook tells me "angel" biscuits were typically so-called for being very light -- in many cases, using yeast as well as baking powder.

@@stannieholt8766 nope... No self rising flour needed. If you have it and use it they do rise more but the recipe doesn't call for it. The story behind the angel biscuits (although the recipe came from her mom Harriet Powers) was that my grandfather came home one evening with his boss unannounced. It was the 40s and money was tight. My grandmother freaked cause she didn't have anything sweet to offer him but wanted to make a good impression. She went to the kitchen and whipped this up really fast and served it with butter and sorgruhhm. The boss said " oh James you weren't kidding your wife cooks like its straight from haven. These are true angel biscuits. " after that nana would often send pans of biscuits to work for grandpal to share. He worked in TVA and lots of man traveled away from home for weeks or months so getting "Mildred's angel biscuits" were a treat. I must have heard that story a million times. Always my grandfather told it. He swore those biscuits got him more than one raise. He was so proud of his wife. My nana turned red as a beet and giggles every time it was told but always admitted that's how it went... Lol... My nana has Been gone almost 20 years now but I do my best too keep her story alive!

What's sorgruhhm?

Or honey and melted butter 🤤

What Apple butter. We have scones with jam and cream or butter if it's a cheese scone.

@@janinedear-barlow apple butter is very much an American thing. Same as apple jam in Russian rations

Or homemade pear butter. 😋

@@janinedear-barlow It's an American jam,sauce somewhere between applesauce method and pudding sauce spices and consistency made from apple. It's cooked down sugar,spices, and apples concentrated by continuous heat over a long period of time.

we have scones. Same as an American biscuit but normally made adding sugar (sometimes fruit) and with milk instead of cream. Traditionally you'd serve them with clotted cream and jam as part of a "cream tea" but that's optional most people just have butter on them. The tea is mandatory though.

@@mclamby you say that but my mum and sister had theirs with coffee. I only have them with tea though. My sister makes some amazing apple scones. American biscuits remind me of cobblers as well.

Ahhh Biscuits N Bully Beef

@@mclamby I’m Australian. We do scones almost the same way. We actually can’t buy clotted cream so we use whipped cream. Fun fact, if you go to a place selling cream teas here, you would order a Devonshire tea, not a cream tea 😊

@@moniquem783 not a Cornish tea?

There's an evolution of chemistry and technique here. The leavening agent is key. There are single-action agents like the potassium carbonate. You have to work quickly with them because they activate only once and at a certain temperature, so the result is honestly kind of mediocre. There are now double-action agents like John mentioned that activate when first wetted letting the dough rise a bit, but also a second time under heat in the oven, so you get a fluffier biscuit. Then, step three is a technique Ryan called laminating. The cold butter is key here because it's a pastry chef's technique. You mix up the dough with the double-acting leavener, roll it out then fold it over on itself, flatten it, and repeat. You want ~7 folds, and yes, there are reasons for that number that relate to your end result. The time frame is important. The double-acting leavening agents came on the market in the late 1800s, early 1900s, and the addition of the folding came in the 1930s, iirc. The type of commercial biscuit you'd get is a whole other food chemistry lesson in and of itself. Suffice it to say each component of those biscuits is designed to give you exactly what you want as a customer buying a biscuit, light, fluffy, perfect taste, long shelf life, and at a cost anyone can afford.

@@kma3647 Its just a biscuit, let's not overthink it.🙄

Yeah my go to biscuit is a cream biscuit. Two ingredients just equal parts by weight self rising flour and cream. Super easy and fast way to make biscuits for biscuits and gravy. I've done the grating the butter method and its too involved for me to really want to do on a weekend mourning.

The flaky biscuit is perfect for breakfast sandwiches. Sausage patty, egg, cheese, and strawberry jam in-between the top and bottom halves. The less worked biscuit is best for gravy though.

@@sheldoniusRex Yet a lot of breakfast sandwich biscuitstoday are closer to the 1900 recipe than to the ultra flaky super soft biscuit. At least, most restaraunts, company kitchens, and fast food places use a little more solid type than fall apart in your mouth. I do very much like the flaky one for most breakfast sandwiches. Just saying.

How did they turn out? 😊

I mixed up the method a little bit and couldn’t have added just a little more sugar but boy they are still good 😊

The girlfriend got up from a nap and was like ‘are you making biscuits!’ They smell sooo good 😌

Sure sign of success. 😊

You can't really screw up a biscuit recipe short of burning them or using too much flour in relation to your liquids and fat. So until you get the "feel" for making them, always err on the side of a too-wet(within reason, obviously) rather than too-dry dough. Because if they're too wet, they're still gonna *taste* fine, the appearance and texture will just be not quite right, while too dry will result in it being floury and just generally unpleasant.

I remember when that happened to me. You want to tell your friends and they think you're crazy because all you want to talk about is 1700's cookery lol

I love it too...N i live in the Caribbean...

+1 for citing the Dutch koekjes (pronounced: kook-jess, with a softened j). It made me think of my grandmother and that's always a good thing =)

IIRC, British English uses “cookie” specifically for soft cookies

The early American biscuits they made are akin to scones here in the U.K., although the modern shop bought one at the end that’s laminated is what I imagine when I think American biscuits. Shamefully I like the look of the modern one, I’m a traitor.

@K MA Hi from NL! The soft "j" in koekjes is pronounced like the "y" in yes

Etymologically close to "bisquit" have a dish "beschuit", which is a type of rusk about the size of a tick pancake.

👏👏👏

Southern biscuits will do that to you 🤤😂

Illinois or the ChiTown area?

@@brucewelty7684 REAL Illinois, not the Windy City. 😎

I'm from Illinois and I love biscuits!

Were the masters of the art of biscuits are, there is love. Ever Girl in the south learns this art, As does most men. My Mom would always tell daddy to, leave her biscuit makings alone.

This offense is part of the reason southern states want to secede.

Virginia in the house. ✌️ Sausage gravy and homemade biscuits are one of my favorites. Any time of the day.

@@GrimmsDeath Oh, man. What a loss that would be.

In the South along with a bowl of Grits, Eggs over eazy and bacon!

@@Delgen1951 Yes. Yum.

Yup. Coast to coast---every diner.

better with butter or butter makes it better.

I felt the same way.

Iconic Food Writer, JAMES BEARD, learned to make Cream Biscuits from his Mother's Chinese Cook, Let. We found the recipe in one of his early classics, BEARD ON BREAD. WE alternate between Let's Cream Biscuits and Buttermilk Biscuits. The layered, 'feathery' biscuits go so well with jams and jellies while the 'porous' kind soak of the sausage gravy so well.

They are amazing for BREAKFAST, with butter, strawberry jam, and a good cup of coffee or tea.

Actually an april fools episode would be a good time to use such an ad. Something like an episode that would speculate what if the founding fathers would react to modern america or something...

Thanks for the information, Dwayne!

@@jamesellsworth9673 You are very welcome. It would be cool if Jon did an episode on bannock. Cheers!

Which will you make??

@@HLBear I had a box of cheddar bay biscuits laying around

I also wonder what the point of it is without acid.

I hope that your request can be granted one day.

There are lots of quail here... ;-)

In California we use drop biscuits in chicken 'n dumplings. My other favorite biscuit dish. I'm hungry for a cobbler now!

@@antilogism Peach, apple, raspberry, or blueberry?

@@camerongunn7906 Yes.

@@Lukos0036 Be advised, all cobblers are made in an cast iron Dutch oven. So there are lots of caramelized chew bits on the bottom and edges.

@@camerongunn7906

When I overwork dough so are mine. I realized I had to handle it like a scone. My dad made the world's best biscuits!!

@@lydiadillard4417 I know they're supposed to be layered, but, I don't know how to achieve that effect.

@@sissybrooks8588 pat out the dough and fold the dough over about 4 to 5 times. Pat out to your desired thickness and cut out. After I cut them out I like to put in freezer for 20 to 30 mins. It helps with making the rise.

@@lydiadillard4417 will definitely try that. Thanks.

@@sissybrooks8588 all heavily layered biscuits are overworked. I've never had one that wasn't.

Lol

I just love watching the episodes he's in.

Apparently mine are old as well.

Justin Wilson was “that Cajun guy”.😃

I use my cast iron frying pan as a baking sheet; biscuits and cookies included. If the batch is too big, I use 2 or 3 frying pans. More often now days I just make a small batch. My question - how do you regulate the fire to the right temperature?

That isn't a modern tray. That's a baking tray from 1769; more specifically, it's a baking sheet inspired by Thomas Jefferson's own baking Sheet. So, to answer your question, that baking sheet he is holding is the one they would use for this purpose in expensive households. No heated hearth, unless you are using the really loose definition of hearth that includes Mud Oven. Hearths were hardly used for baking beyond a celebratory practice, until dutch ovens came along and made it practicable. Until then, it would've been placed directly on the stone or clay surface of the mud oven.

And for the temperature, the oven is not precise. Experience gives you a very good idea what is needed.

There's the flaky version that's as you describe, and the cakey version that's more like a savory scone or miniature soda bread.

Only in butter content. A real American biscuit is an incredibly light and crumbly pastry. You barely mix it. They over mixed these.

I’ve never thought about it like that, but now that you say it, the comparison totally makes sense!

I like my biscuits made with lard.

The layered version is relatively new. It's the 1907 biscuit recipe that's folded and rolled a few times before cutting. I like the 1907 biscuit bc that's the kind of biscuit I grew up eating (and still eat). The flaky 2021 one reminds me of the biscuits in a can, which taste fake to me. If you don't know what biscuits in a can are, google Pilsbury biscuits in a can.

Hello you.

I was wondering the same thing. That and the etymology of an American biscuit vs British biscuit vs cookie.

The more immediate relative is the shortcake which is basically an American biscuit with extra sugar.

Me either! So excited!

Modern biscuits are moist and layered, very buttery (or buttermilk-y). The 1870s style is more like a scone though not sweet. They're all related. Flour cousins!

The US biscuit is as far from a scone (which is great) as the English Muffin is from a Crumpet (which is sad) Scones suck but crumpets are delicious.

@@brucewelty7684 scones and crumpets are 2 totally different things ( baker/pastry chef of 17 years)

@@HLBear "Flour cousins" Ahaha!

*inhale* make me.

Nope! Make me! Oh, and that's my Scots heritage talking. There's a reason Hadrian had to build that wall. ;>)

Aah, the 18th century British redcoat. Great soldiers, sometimes lacking in adequate leadership and commanding generals, but nonetheless an excellent fighting force fighting in nearly every corner of the globe at some point. Their scenes, in any movie depicting historical episodes, are always my favourite. And you're correct too, it's a bloody scone, or scoan as Tim Brooke-Taylor would say.