September 20, 2024 • 37 mins
Southern biscuits are the fluffly, flaky stuff of dreams, but they're a fairly new invention. Anney and Lauren explore how these biscuits came to be, how to make them at home, and why ‘biscuit’ in British English is a different baked good entirely.
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
Hello, and welcome to Savor. I'm Annie Eriese.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
And I'm Lauren Vogelbaum, and today we're talking about biscuits.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Biscuits, which, as we'll dive into in this episode, might
be confusing. People might be thinking of different things when
we say biscuits.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Oh yeah, this is an anomology heavy episode. So if
you're into that, then I'm excited for you.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
I am too. We're specifically talking about Southern style, American
fluffy baked biscuits. Right, I'm already getting a craving.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Oh yeah, this is a really hungry episode for me
for sure. We did get to eat some biscuits when
we were in Asheville, which is what kind of inspired
us to do this episode.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Yeah. They were enormous and we got them from this
place called Biscuit Head, And here is us discussing the experience.
When we got back from our.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Trip along with Pretty Dyling, we finally got some sleep
after doing a little bit more publishing work because that's
the industry that we're in, and woke up bright and
early the next morning because we had a hot tip
from the nice people at Wicked Weed. Yes, we'd been
planning on going there, but they hooked us up with
(01:20):
one of the managers who works with Biscuit Head, which
is a small chain in Ashville that has biscuits and
other breakfast food. Big feature is a sauce bar of
like butters and jams that they all make in house.
It was so good. I mean, it was just the
(01:40):
butteriest biscuit that I think I've had in a long time.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
They were huge. I ordered the gravy flight because they're
also known for gravies. I thought it was going to
come with one biscuit, and the one biscuit itself would
have been enough because it was huge. But it came
with like three biscuits for three flights of gravy, and
then I tried all of the jams and butters.
Speaker 3 (02:03):
I woke up that morning and I was not hungry,
and so what do you do when you're not hungry?
You go to breakfast and you order an eggs benedict.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
That's the only way, the only way.
Speaker 3 (02:14):
But it was very good. It was delicious, and their
Holland daise sauce was wonderful, and it came with some
greens and it came on a huge biscuit. Were they
referring to them as cathead biscuits.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
I don't think they were, but we were.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
They were the size of the head of a cat.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
Absolutely, they were big biscuits.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
Yeah, they were huge, and they were buttery, and they
were what a biscuit should be. Yeah, in my opinion,
I mean shots fired, I guess, but get shots. They
should just be buttery and flaky, and that's what they were.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
Just in aside for our atl listeners or anyone coming
to visit, we have a lot of good biscuits in Alanta,
but if you haven't tried the comfy chicken biscuit at
Homegrown and your diet allows, I recommend it.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
Oh yeah, Homegrown I think is my favorite biscuit in town.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
Oh so good. Also recommend sharing because it is huge, heavy.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Upsettingly large. Yeah, it's intimidating. Yeah, that's so good.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
Yeah. I definitely grew up in a house where biscuits
were those things that came out of the Pillsbury dope
boy oh uh huh.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
Thing can Yeah, like the weird tube.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
Yeah, so I was expecting that kind of size and
when I saw the price, I thought, hmmm, it's better
be a lot. And then it was.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
A biscuit just as big as a cat's had, just.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
About maybe a little bigger, maybe a little bigger. Anyway,
let's get to our question. Oh, yes, biscuits, what are they? Okay?
And yes? First off, American biscuits, particularly American Southern biscuits,
what are they? They're like the soft bread, light concoction,
(03:54):
not English biscuits, which are more like what we Yankees
would call cookies. Right.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
Modernly, biscuits are a type of wheat flour based bread
called a quick bread, meaning that they do not use
yeast to rise, but rather chemical leaveners like baking powder
and baking soda. This means that you can mix them
up real quick. You don't need to wait for the
yeast to produce air pockets in the dough. They're made
with just white flour, butter and or lard and or
shortening milk or buttermilk or cream, your chemical leaveners, and
(04:25):
maybe like a pinch of salt and sugar. Mix up,
bake them as individual pieces rather than like a loaf
or a whole panful to be cut afterwards. And due
to several really awesome physics things that I'll get into
in a minute here, those ingredients bake up into this
sort of savory confection of a bread. It's light and
airy and flaky on the inside and crumbly crisp on
(04:47):
the outside.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
Darn you, Laura, my craving is intensifying.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
In an article for Southern Reader, one Nelda Hill described
good biscuits this way, liked as a Georgia are and
as flaky as the paint on the west side of
my house. A good biscuit stops gravy without crumbling and
holds molasses like a teaspoon.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
It is one of the best conveyors of oh yeah, molasses.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
Of stuff, jam gravy.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
Yeah, I love light as a Georgia r.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
That's Gelgia, Doldia.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
There are a lot of different types of American biscuits,
some much more difficult to wrangle together. It's the beaten biscuit,
drop biscuit, cathead biscuit, buttermilk biscuit, sweet biscuit, sweet potato biscuit,
the Red Lobster cheddar bay biscuit. I have told Lauren,
and now I will share with you. I have this
dream of going to Red Lobster, ordering their nicest bottle
(05:45):
of red wine and just eating the cheddar Bay biscuits.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
I think this is a valid dream that we can
make come to pass. Like I think that's the mark
of a good dream.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
You know, I agree, and I one day I shall
happily be munching on Jetnabey biscuits and drinking my medium price.
And I also, infamously to me, at least, because I've
never shared this video with anybody, tried to make a
social video when we first started of me making buttermilk biscuits.
(06:15):
Remember after we got that buttermilk from Banner Butters. Oh yeah, yeah,
I tried to make buttermilk biscuits and it was a disaster,
a hilarious sticky disaster. And it's great because I couldn't
stop filming because my was everywhere and it was sticking,
just increasingly panicked more and more.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
I still wish that I had been there, because it's
really easy to correct sticky biscuits. You just add a
little bit more flour until it evens out again. That's
all you really have to do.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
I think I was near DearS, like it was slowly
devouring me. Uh huh. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
This is also why it's important to add your milk
product and small amounts just until it comes together.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
I was so excited about that.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
You just added at all? Yeah, perfect, yeah, oh no.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
Maybe I'll post it. It is kind of funny, I
think at the beginning, I'm so upbeaten optimistic about it.
According to the recipe, no fools can mess that up,
but they don't know what kind of fool I am.
And then cut to oh my goodness, what do I
do anyway?
Speaker 2 (07:23):
Well, you made it through.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
I did.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
You're a stronger person for.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
It, Thank you. I won't forget that, and I haven't
tried again since. But maybe one of these days.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
We'll work on it. With our powers combined, we can
cook a Southern meal.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
Yes, But back to that terminology. Why the difference in
terminology though?
Speaker 2 (07:42):
Oh yeah, okay, So the biscuits that we American English
speakers think of today when we hear the word, these
fluffy things that come from the South are a relatively
recent invention and bear little resemblance to what the word
biscuit referred to throughout history. We will get into that,
but first, biscuit science.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
I do sound the best kind of.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
Science, all right? Oh man, and y'all will get to
talk about chemical leaven nurse.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
It's like cirkeds. It's exciting, we promise.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
It gets excited about gas bubbles. I don't know, all right.
So baking soda, which I mentioned earlier, is the street
name for sodium bicarbonate. If you've ever used a bath
bomb to make your bathwater all fizzy, that was the
main ingredient. It's this dry powder that reacts with acids
and releases bubbles of carbon dioxide, which makes it a
good replacement in baked goods for a yeast, which also
(08:37):
release carbon dioxide bubbles. You just have to wait around
for them to eat sugar, and you know fart out
the carbon dioxide.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
It's lovely. It is.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
You want bubbles and baked goods because they get trapped
in the dough as the dough heats and solidifies in
the oven, creating these we pockets that make the bread
fluffy and tender. Baking powder, meanwhile, is made up of
baking soda plus a dry powdered form of an acid,
something like cream of tartar for example. So when you
get the powdered acid wet, it can interact with baking
(09:07):
soda in the mix and produce that carbon dioxide. Recipes
often call for baking powder instead of straight soda, so
that you don't have to add your own acid, which
would more greatly affect the flavor of the final product.
It's also a little bit more reliable in terms of
like how much gas you'd get out of it. Yeah,
you're thinking of the other kind of gas. I'm talking
(09:29):
about the kind that's creating pockets in the bread. Speaking
of consistency, some baking powders even contain two types of
acids to ensure that as much of that sodium bicarbonate
gets activated as possible, and those are called double acting
baking powders. If you've ever seen single acting, that's one acid.
Double acting is too.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
I for a long time, I think I said on
this show, until maybe three or four years ago, I
thought baking soda and baking powder were the same thing. Ah,
and I was just using them interchange changeably. Oh yeah, no,
And I think I sometimes i'd see them both on
a recipe and it never occurred to me, maybe these
are two different things. Why would they list it twice
(10:08):
with different levels of ingredients?
Speaker 2 (10:11):
Some copy editor just wasn't paying attention.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
Yeah, you know what, I think you should add another
half teaspoon of baking soda. I always assumed baking soda
was the real one and baking powder was like, I
don't know, some knockoff of bakings. So I've learned a lot,
and my base goods haven't proved for it.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
I believe that, yeah, yeah, it was great, it is.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
It is okay.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
So the way that you make biscuits is you sift
together your flour and your baking powder to make sure
the powder is evenly distributed and that the flour particles
aren't like cacking up with each other. Then you cut
in cold butter or whatever other solid fat you're using,
and cut in means that you work the fat into
these wee tiny little pieces, evenly distributed it again throughout
(11:00):
the flour mixture. There are more or less, there are
a lot of methods for doing this, and everyone has
an opinion on which is best. I will not presume
to tell y'all that is up to you. This is
a decision you have to make for yourself.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
It's between you and your kitchen maide, you, you and
your biscuit. God.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
Yes, you want the butter to be cold I mentioned cold,
and the pieces of it to be tiny, because It's
not just adding delicious fat into your dough. It's helping
form the structure of the finished biscuit. When your butter
fragments start cold or whatever kind of fat I'm just
going to say butter from here on out. When they're cold,
they're taking up a lot of space in the dough.
(11:39):
So when you put the dough into the oven and
it starts getting hot, the dough will start firming up
just as the butter melts. This will leave these wee
little air pockets in the dough where the granules of
butter used to be, meaning that you wind up with
yet fluffier and flakier biscuits.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
Mmmm m. And I've mentioned before, but my method, my
lazy method, it is you freeze the butter and then
use it greater and grate the butter into the lazy
or clever thank you, I just need someone to understand me.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
It's a valid method, thank you, and way easier than
like chopping it in with knives, which is what I do.
Or yeah anyway, okay, So the last ingredient before you
pop your biscuits and the oven is liquid, usually milk,
maybe buttermilk something like that. This adds water that allows
the proteins in the flour to link up into a tender,
(12:33):
chewy gluten. And also when the dough heats up in
the oven, that water content will boil, forming more air
bubbles that help the lift The liquid milk or whatever
also starts to activate the acids in that baking powder.
Biscuits are generally made with double acting baking powders. One
of the acids they contain won't start reacting with baking
(12:54):
soda until the stuff goes into the oven and gets
up to about one hundred and eighty degrees fahrenheit or
eighty celsius. But the other acid and your double acting
baking powder will start reacting at room temperature as soon
as the liquid is added. And this is why you
want to work biscuit dough quickly and get it into
the oven fast after you add your liquid, because it
(13:15):
will start to deflate if you leave it out too long.
Same goes for any number of quick breads.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
Yes it's true.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
Yeah, so yeah, you mix up your ingredients. You work
the dough quickly and minimally to help the gluten chain
up just enough but not too much. You don't want
chewy biscuits. You roll it out to whatever thickness the
recipe calls for. Cut them with something sharp. This is
important because the blunt edges of a glass will kind
of collapse the internal layers of the dough along the
edges of each biscuit.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
Yeah, I want something sharp that'll prevent rise. Yeah, and
then you get your biscuits in the oven. Science, biscuit science,
biscuits science, so cool, unless you're making drop biscuits and
then you don't cut them. That's a slightly different process
and also cool. Nothing wrong with it.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
Also cool, Yeah, nothing wrong with it.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
Ha.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
The drop biscuit gods are gonna curses terrible biscuits from
here on out. I've already paid my price, gesturing to
someone that's not there. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
Depending on what kind of biscuit you're looking for, there
are so many recipes online that can help you out here.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
Yes, so many recipes videos, what have you. Oh yeah,
And if we're talking about nutrition, it depends on the type.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
But it's fat and flower I mean they're not great
for you, No, I mean they have a little bit
of protein in there. That's good. You know, fat helps
keep you full, that's nice. Ye, it does Whenever I
think of the nutrition of bread products, I think of
that line from Scott Pilgrim versus the World where they're
eating garlic bread and he's like, oh, just eat garlic
bread all the time. And she's like bread makes you fat,
and he's like.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
Bread makes you fat. No. Yeah, just did a like
roller coaster woo motion.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
It's pretty good.
Speaker 1 (15:05):
Yes, and numbers are a bit hard to come by,
but we did find some.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
Yes. As of twenty fifteen, the biscuit was named one
of America's fastest growing menu items by the market research
firm Nations Restaurant News. This is part of what's being
called the rise of breakfast.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
Is that a pun?
Speaker 2 (15:22):
It's a biscuit pun now ha ha. More fast and
fast casual chains are offering breakfast items, and more of
them are offering them all day. The breakfast category is
projected to reach sixty billion dollars a year in value
by twenty nineteen, up from just fifty billion in twenty fifteen.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
I find so interesting about that is in our episode
on Brunch, we talked about how less people are eating
breakfast ye now than ever, But at the same time,
people like breakfast.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
Food, right, just maybe not at breakfast, right.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
The rise of more all day breakfast items a lah
McDonald's facing that pressure to have breakfast all day.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
Yeah, they were like Starbucks offering all of those breakfast
items like breakfast sandwiches and whatever.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
Yeah. But from my own anecdotal experience, as I've mentioned
many times, I've came from a small town and there
weren't that many restaurant options when I was growing up
there. There are a lot more now, But one of the
options was dairy Queen ooh. And it caused traffic jams
in the morning because it was like it didn't have
(16:33):
a parking lot really, it was just right off the road. Wow,
And so people it was next to an intersection, and
people going to all the schools were in the other direction,
so the drive through would be out.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
Causing snaked out onto the road.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
Yeah, like past the intersection.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
Oh my goodness.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
And it got to the point where they were like
forming a road across the street that wasn't there, but
people would go get in line over there. And what
everybody told me they were ordering, because I was always
so confused by this was the biscuits, some variety of
the biscuits all right, from dairy Queen.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
I didn't know that Dairy Queen even served that. Oh
they do, certainly around the Atlanta area. Oh, now, I
wonder okay, all right, history of dairy Queen is a
whole separate episode.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
Oh, I've looked into it. Do you know who owns it?
Speaker 4 (17:19):
Now?
Speaker 1 (17:19):
Why?
Speaker 2 (17:20):
No?
Speaker 1 (17:20):
Warren Buffett?
Speaker 2 (17:21):
What? Yes?
Speaker 1 (17:23):
I looked into it briefly for a Sunday episode. I
could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure Warren Buffett owns it.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
Okay, all right, well, all right, future episode for sure.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
M chill and grill baby. But in the meantime, we
have a lot of really fascinating history about the biscuit
for you, including all that etymology. Yeah, but first we're
gonna pause for a quick break ForWord from our sponsor.
(17:55):
And we're back. Thank you, sponsor, Yes, thank you, And
we're back with our etymological journey. Ooh yeah, ooh ah,
what a fun journey this will be so okay. The
word biscuit comes from a combination of the Latin word biz,
meaning cooked, and coctus, meaning twice, used to describe a
(18:17):
common ration for soldiers of the Roman Empire.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
These biscuits were unpleasant. They were made without any fat
or any leavening agents at all, so they would last
a long time.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
Yeah, And because of that, as you can imagine, it
was popular on long journeys where these biscuits are hard
attack or.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
Biscuits or sea biscuits or ship's biscuits or pilot bread.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
Interesting were faked up to four times to make sure
they'd last the journey. And that reminds me of Hagrid's
rock cakes Harry Potter reference of the episode, which I
have a recipe for. And I'm always kind of like,
why why cook?
Speaker 2 (18:56):
I wonder if they're just like scones.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
They probably are. They probably completely are.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
Said send me the rest, P'll check it out.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
Okay. Also, the French and Italian had similar related words biscuite,
which actually came before the British word and biscotti respectively.
And also King Louis the Fourteen Soldiers called biscuits stone bread,
rock cakes rock cakes indeed, and to soften up these babies,
(19:25):
sailors would sometimes dip them in brine, or they would
break them against their arms to make smaller, easier to
eat pieces. All seemed just okay in the biscuit world.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
Yeah, they maybe weren't tasty, but they were nutritious enough
and lasted quite a bit.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
Mm hmm. By fourteenth century Britain, the word biscuit was
used to describe a sweet cookie like thing. And yes,
grown all you like British listeners, we can't hear you.
That was dried out. Over time, it softened and became
a perfect accompaniment for tea. But language jury dan. In
(20:09):
the seventeen hundreds, the Dutch started using the word koukias
to refer to little cakes. Yep, I bet a lot
of you see where this is going. These little cakes
had a leavening agent that gave them a cakey texture,
and they were overall biscuity, which is confusing in the
(20:29):
context of all of this, but yes, the Dutch word
was adopted in English and lives on as cookie. When
Dutch and English merchants began selling their wares in the
New World, words collide words and worlds. WHOA, what do
you call these things? Heresy? I call them this. After
the American Revolutionary War, Americans were not so into the British,
(20:53):
so they sided with the Dutch when it came to
the great biscuits or cookies debate. The Americans called the
British biscuits by cookies are crackers out of spot, which
I love and totally understand. And Americans took up the
word biscuit and applied it to a round, soft, not
(21:14):
twice baked bread typically served with gravy, which is also
a different meaning in Britain. Gravy does so fun with birds?
Oh yeah, mm hmm, and so does flapjack. What apparently
flapjack means granola in Britain.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
Oh I did know that, did you?
Speaker 1 (21:31):
Yeah, so it's true. Yeah, well one of my nicknames
is flapjack. Oh really, so it takes on a whole
new meaning if it has a different meaning. Goodness, I'm granola.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
I was ordering British snacks at one point and I
got very confused about it. All turned out okay, but.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
I'm relieved to hear that, sincerely, flapjacks are not. I'd
be very disappointed if I ordered what I thought was
pancakes and I got granola. I have to say, but
that's just me. That's just me. And another thing that
I thought was interesting about this whole thing. We've talked
about Nobisco before on the show, The company and how
(22:07):
it stands for National Biscuit Company, which in this context
is interesting. It's one of the biggest, if not the
biggest companies specializing in cookies and crackers. But they use
biscuit in the British sense of the word, and they
are an American company. Yeah, huh huh. Indeed, another thing
that comes up a lot in this conversation around biscuits
(22:29):
is scones. The New York Times tells me the only
ingredients separating basic recipes for both of them are two
tables foods of sugar and an egg, which I have
my doubts.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
Oh, scone aside, Okay, all right, there is a big
difference between what coffee houses here in the States sell
as scones versus what scones have traditionally been. Scones here
have become these stiff, crumbly, super sweet things. If you
get a scone over in the British Isles, you'd likely
be served something a lot like an American biscuit, probably
(23:00):
lightly sweetened. Basically, if you're making what i'd call a
proper scone, and this is something I have an opinion about, yes,
you're adding an egg and using cream instead of milk
in an otherwise basic American biscuit recipe. The extra proteins
and fats make the resulting baked goods a little bit
more cake like, a little bit more like like creamy
textured than Southern biscuits. They make them all the time
(23:20):
and they're fab. Oh yeah, you can make them sweeter, savory.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
Yeah, a whole scone world.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
I love a good cheddar herb scone.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
Oh my gosh, next time you make scones, I'm just
saying I'm around.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
You have to eat them fresh, like piping hot.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
You there, don't worry about that. In fact, you'll be like,
how did she know? I just appear scones. I think
when I was in high school, in our Civics class,
every student got assigned a country and you had to
do a big project on it, and part of that
involved cooking a recipe is associated with the country. I
(23:58):
can't remember if I made scone or crumpets, but they
did not turn out well, and it was part of
your grade. I was really pond about it. Oh, they
were fine, they just kind of blankland yeah and hard.
I don't know what I did wrong, but I have
not had I don't think i've had a proper scone
if I have. It's been a while, so.
Speaker 2 (24:17):
All right, just saying we can rectify this perfect All right.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
Back to the American style biscuit. It is another food
that arose because of limited resources and practicality. When European
settlers first arrived to the New World, they didn't have much.
They were starting from scratch, like you do with a biscuit.
In many cases, this meant that a lot of their
foods were simple and fairly bland. Common food stuffs at
(24:44):
the time were baked ground wheat. Biscuits are baked ground
corn corn bread. Depending on whether you lived in the
North or South.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
Southern mills traditionally were built to process corn, so even
when wheat started coming to the South, the mills there
were sort of crap at grinding it. So for a
long time, flour breads like biscuits were a rich people
food in the South. Everyone else ate corn bread.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
Yeah, and corn bread was also easier to make in
terms of time and equipment. You didn't need a special
pan or an oven, and a corn corn bread is
a different episode. Oh yeah, I can't wait to talk
about pones.
Speaker 2 (25:20):
I can't wait for you to talk about pones.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
We all can't wait about pones, and it's actually very
kind of boring, but.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
You know, we have pone and patience.
Speaker 1 (25:30):
Nonetheless, we do Either of these corn bread or biscuits
could be cheaply spiced up with a bit of gravy
of some sort made from the drippings of roasted meat,
filled out with a pinch of this and that gravy
could make a meal out of those bland breads. By
the time the Revolutionary War worled around, biscuits are cornbread
and gravy seemed to have been relatively commonplace. By the
(25:53):
mid eighteenth century, the biscuit was a staple in the
wealthy American South, but it still wasn't quite the biscuit
we think of today. Because yeast was so costly, people
often made biscuits without this leavening agent. So making biscuits
was a laborious process. I would argue it still is,
but I'm really lazy, apparently terrible at adding milk. In
(26:15):
order to get air in the dough and ensure that
it would rise, biscuit makers had to use the old
elbow breath and really beat the dough and fold it
once baked. This dough resulted in something bread like but sturdier,
all the better for scooping up that gravy.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
Oh yeah, you could.
Speaker 1 (26:34):
Use pearl ash instead of manual labor to get your
biscuits to rise, But that came as a sacrifice of flavor.
I know we've talked about this before. But to get
pearl ash, which is potassium carbonate, folks poured water over
wood ashes already you might be having some. You might
realize why that impacts the flavor. Yeah, the resulting solid
(26:55):
was pearlash. A similar process was used to make lie
by the way, using pearl ash pretty much guaranteed a bitter,
soap like flavor, like cly And that's not what you're
looking for in biscuits. Not really, No, no, at least
not most people. The first recipes for the beaten biscuit
(27:15):
came out of Maryland and Virginia, although I did see
some state debates claiming I'm positive, oh absolutely. All they
called for ingredients wise, was flour, milk, and lard. You
need some sort of tool to beat these things together with, though,
a specialized axe or a wooden mallet or popular options. Oh,
(27:36):
an axe for biscuit.
Speaker 2 (27:38):
I need to know more about this biscuit axe.
Speaker 1 (27:41):
All right, Oh my gosh, it should need one of
your axes, your D and D character, your biscuit axe.
Can she cook? Oh?
Speaker 2 (27:51):
I don't know. That's a good question. I think she can,
but I'm not sure that you really want to eat
a whole.
Speaker 1 (27:56):
Lot of it. This is an important character question for you. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
I'll have to think more about that, all right, but yeah, yeah.
The amount of effort that these beaten biscuits required to make.
We're talking hours of beating air into the dough to
make it so that your biscuits would rise when you
baked them. So the style of biscuit was really only
made by enslaved people for their masters, and it dropped
out of fashion after emancipation.
Speaker 1 (28:21):
After baking soda was invented in the eighteen forties, a
lot of Southern cookbooks published recipes for soda biscuits, which
used baking soda to achieve the desired rising.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
The first baking powder was patented just a little bit
after that in eighteen fifty six.
Speaker 1 (28:37):
A different thing, yes, truly, And we have some more
history for you, But first we have one more quick
break for word from our sponsor, and we're back. Thank
you sponsor, Yes, thank you. There are a couple of
(28:58):
reasons why biscuits took off in the South in the
Southern United States and not so much in the North.
One of the main ones has to do with the
types of flour used in these regions. In the North,
you were likely to find tougher, more gluteny wheats that
could survive the cold winters, whereas in the South you
(29:20):
were more likely to find softer wheats with less protein
that made for fluffier, springier baked goods. Before national distribution
was a possibility, bleached all purpose flowers were pretty limited
to the Southern American states. This is also part of
the reason why the North took to bagels more than
the South did. Oh yeah h in part because of
(29:41):
the amount of labor and potential costs. At first, biscuits
were largely something you'd have on Sundays only in the South.
To save time and money, large clumps of dough were
dropped on a baking sheet, giving us another type of biscuit,
the cathead biscuit. If you couldn't afford or fine flour,
you might use the abundant sweet potato in its place.
(30:04):
Abundant in the South. The sweet potato biscuit is still
alive and well today in the South. By the way,
we have a pretty popular I guess it's a chain.
Speaker 2 (30:12):
It's a local chain.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
Yeah, Highland Bakery. They have sweet potato biscuits. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:17):
Around the middle of the nineteenth century, flour milling technology improved,
and meanwhile Midwestern wheat production was being stepped up, and
the end result was that better, cheaper flour became available
for everyone to buy.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
In the South. Yes, and then we get Alexander P. Ashbourne,
an African American grocery store owner out of California. He
is the lives of biscuit makers with his invention of
the biscuit cutter in eighteen seventy five. It was spring loaded,
it came in different shapes. I got very excited about it.
(30:52):
He also was involved in three patents for refining and
processing coconut oil, by the way. Ah, and then in
nineteen thirty Lively Willoughby out of Louisville, Kentucky invented refrigerator biscuits. Though. Yeah,
the dough pushed into those cardboard twos.
Speaker 2 (31:11):
Oh high pressure, terrifyingly high pressure.
Speaker 1 (31:13):
Very scary, right, It's frightening. He got the patent in
nineteen thirty one, which was acquired by a local company
almost immediately and then acquired by Pillsbury Mills and nineteen
fifty one ns that Pillsbury Mills. According to the Encyclopedia
of Consumer Brands, Willoughby's invention was sort of a mishap.
To store biscuits, Willoughby would slice the biscuits, wrap them
(31:36):
in tinfoil, and then push them into cardboard tubes for
storage in the ice box. When he would go to
retrieve them, the compressed dough would explode. Allegedly, Willoughby would
send his son up a ladder to scrape the dough
off the ceiling, I think to repackage. But this did
not deter him, and he kept experimenting until he came
(31:58):
up with a less explosive way to store. Do less explosive,
and this was a big deal. Take this first line
of an early display ad out of the Atlanta Constitution.
Once in a lifetime, once in a generation, such things happen.
Speaker 2 (32:13):
Excavation point sounds like you're talking about Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Speaker 1 (32:16):
This is great, it's true. I like it, but it's
just a biscuit through a biscuit, like I kind of
alluded to. I loved those the Grand Slam biscuits when
I was a kid that had all the layers. It
said at one hundred layers. I don't know if that's true,
but I would put a different I would alternate butter
jam butter jam. Oh dang all of the layes.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
Oh, that sounds delicious.
Speaker 1 (32:40):
I also really like the crescent rolls, and yeah, I
was terrified of opening the tube. I used to make
my mom do it. They were launched in nineteen sixty five,
by the way, with the tagline popping Fresh and then aside.
Every time I hear Willoughby, I think of that Twilight
Zone episode.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
Does anyone else anyone let us know?
Speaker 1 (33:01):
I really want to know. I really want to know.
I think it's called next Stop Willoughby, so it's easy
to find should you want to.
Speaker 2 (33:08):
I'm just going to put that out there.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
Another biscuit innovation in nineteen eighty three, White Lily and
Yes the Flower brand came out with self rising flour
with white winter wheat.
Speaker 2 (33:21):
This already has the chemical leaveners added in Yeah, h
winter wheat. By the way, if you were wondering about that,
which I was, and went on a very large deep
dive that was ultimately fruitless, which was my favorite kind
of deep dive.
Speaker 1 (33:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:36):
Winter wheat is a category of types of wheat that
are typically planted in the fall and allowed to germinate
over the winter and they start rising up over the spring,
rather than less sturdy types that are typically planted in
the spring. But it's really complicated, and I guess we
have to do a whole episode on wheat someday, but
it's going to be so massive, so I'm honestly not
(33:57):
looking forward to it. So just forget that I said anything.
Speaker 1 (34:00):
Okay, I have a really lame fun but I'm gonna
make it. It's dull like Homer Simpson. Oh not Laurn't sitting
back like oh Annie, you gotta let Annie be Annie.
You know what helped popularize the biscuit outside of the South?
(34:21):
What Kentucky Fried Chicken as more and more popped up
across the US and the world.
Speaker 2 (34:28):
Also other rival chicken chains like Bojangles, Chick fil A,
and Popeye'es. Yeah, in the past few years, these chains
have opened thousands of new locations around the world, introducing
more and more people to American biscuits.
Speaker 1 (34:40):
Yeah. And as I've said before, in my personal experience
traveling Kentucky, Fried Chicken is probably the restaurant chain, fast
food chain and icee second most when I've traveled McDonald's,
KFC and Subway. Right.
Speaker 2 (34:57):
Yeah, when we visited that first KFC in Kentucky, their
biscuit was totally decent. It was good. Yeah, I liked it.
We tipped it in something I think, I think the gravy.
I think the chicken, yeah, or maybe yeah, because I
had mashed potatoes, so I tipped it in the mashed potato.
G That's right, good, totally decent. I have an ending
quote from that same article by Neilda Hill that I
(35:18):
referenced at the top. She was kind of waxing poetic
about how biscuits bring people together, how the dough is
the tie that binds us all in the South, and
she said, rich, poor, black, white schooled, unschooled, churched, irreligious
biscuits seem to be the one thing other than humidity
that Southerners have in common, next to jazz. They may
(35:41):
be the South's great contribution to civilization.
Speaker 1 (35:44):
Get it, biscuit, It's really funny because my friend's cat's
name is biscuit.
Speaker 2 (35:51):
That's a good name for a cat, isn't that. Yeah, yeah,
making biscuits when they' kneading. Yeah, sharks, sharp pointy biscuits.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
Yeah, that's a wonderful quote. And uh, we're gonna have
to get some biscuits and scones, all right.
Speaker 2 (36:08):
Well, he looks so disappointed. This is this is wonderful news.
Speaker 1 (36:14):
I can't get them quickly enough.
Speaker 2 (36:16):
Oh okay, I see, I understand now.
Speaker 4 (36:23):
And that brings us to the end of this classic episode.
We hope that you enjoyed it as much as we
enjoyed bringing it back. As always, if you have any
thoughts about this, any recipes, any memories I have to
tell you kind of unrelated. I got moved to tears
(36:44):
the other day by a sudden encounter with Tim tims
that I wasn't expecting, which are called biscuits in some countries,
But I was shocked at our emotional saw them so
fucking have that really powerful impact. And I feel like
biscuits is one of those things that people.
Speaker 2 (37:02):
Have familial right share, like childhood memories that are wrapped
up in the people that you love and the share
the meals that you shared.
Speaker 1 (37:10):
And yeah, so many types too.
Speaker 4 (37:14):
Oh yeah, well, listeners, If you would like to write
to us, you can. Our email is hello at saborpod
dot com.
Speaker 2 (37:22):
We're also on social media. You can find us on Twitter, Facebook,
and Instagram at saber pod and we do hope to
hear from you. Save is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my Heart Radio, you can visit the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows. Thanks as always to our super producers Dylan
Fagan and Andrew Howard. Thanks to you for listening, and
we hope that lots more good things are coming your
(37:43):
way
Hello, and welcome to Savor. I'm Annie Eriese.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
And I'm Lauren Vogelbaum, and today we're talking about biscuits.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Biscuits, which, as we'll dive into in this episode, might
be confusing. People might be thinking of different things when
we say biscuits.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Oh yeah, this is an anomology heavy episode. So if
you're into that, then I'm excited for you.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
I am too. We're specifically talking about Southern style, American
fluffy baked biscuits. Right, I'm already getting a craving.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Oh yeah, this is a really hungry episode for me
for sure. We did get to eat some biscuits when
we were in Asheville, which is what kind of inspired
us to do this episode.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Yeah. They were enormous and we got them from this
place called Biscuit Head, And here is us discussing the experience.
When we got back from our.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Trip along with Pretty Dyling, we finally got some sleep
after doing a little bit more publishing work because that's
the industry that we're in, and woke up bright and
early the next morning because we had a hot tip
from the nice people at Wicked Weed. Yes, we'd been
planning on going there, but they hooked us up with
(01:20):
one of the managers who works with Biscuit Head, which
is a small chain in Ashville that has biscuits and
other breakfast food. Big feature is a sauce bar of
like butters and jams that they all make in house.
It was so good. I mean, it was just the
(01:40):
butteriest biscuit that I think I've had in a long time.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
They were huge. I ordered the gravy flight because they're
also known for gravies. I thought it was going to
come with one biscuit, and the one biscuit itself would
have been enough because it was huge. But it came
with like three biscuits for three flights of gravy, and
then I tried all of the jams and butters.
Speaker 3 (02:03):
I woke up that morning and I was not hungry,
and so what do you do when you're not hungry?
You go to breakfast and you order an eggs benedict.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
That's the only way, the only way.
Speaker 3 (02:14):
But it was very good. It was delicious, and their
Holland daise sauce was wonderful, and it came with some
greens and it came on a huge biscuit. Were they
referring to them as cathead biscuits.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
I don't think they were, but we were.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
They were the size of the head of a cat.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
Absolutely, they were big biscuits.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
Yeah, they were huge, and they were buttery, and they
were what a biscuit should be. Yeah, in my opinion,
I mean shots fired, I guess, but get shots. They
should just be buttery and flaky, and that's what they were.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
Just in aside for our atl listeners or anyone coming
to visit, we have a lot of good biscuits in Alanta,
but if you haven't tried the comfy chicken biscuit at
Homegrown and your diet allows, I recommend it.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
Oh yeah, Homegrown I think is my favorite biscuit in town.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
Oh so good. Also recommend sharing because it is huge, heavy.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Upsettingly large. Yeah, it's intimidating. Yeah, that's so good.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
Yeah. I definitely grew up in a house where biscuits
were those things that came out of the Pillsbury dope
boy oh uh huh.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
Thing can Yeah, like the weird tube.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
Yeah, so I was expecting that kind of size and
when I saw the price, I thought, hmmm, it's better
be a lot. And then it was.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
A biscuit just as big as a cat's had, just.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
About maybe a little bigger, maybe a little bigger. Anyway,
let's get to our question. Oh, yes, biscuits, what are they? Okay?
And yes? First off, American biscuits, particularly American Southern biscuits,
what are they? They're like the soft bread, light concoction,
(03:54):
not English biscuits, which are more like what we Yankees
would call cookies. Right.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
Modernly, biscuits are a type of wheat flour based bread
called a quick bread, meaning that they do not use
yeast to rise, but rather chemical leaveners like baking powder
and baking soda. This means that you can mix them
up real quick. You don't need to wait for the
yeast to produce air pockets in the dough. They're made
with just white flour, butter and or lard and or
shortening milk or buttermilk or cream, your chemical leaveners, and
(04:25):
maybe like a pinch of salt and sugar. Mix up,
bake them as individual pieces rather than like a loaf
or a whole panful to be cut afterwards. And due
to several really awesome physics things that I'll get into
in a minute here, those ingredients bake up into this
sort of savory confection of a bread. It's light and
airy and flaky on the inside and crumbly crisp on
(04:47):
the outside.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
Darn you, Laura, my craving is intensifying.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
In an article for Southern Reader, one Nelda Hill described
good biscuits this way, liked as a Georgia are and
as flaky as the paint on the west side of
my house. A good biscuit stops gravy without crumbling and
holds molasses like a teaspoon.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
It is one of the best conveyors of oh yeah, molasses.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
Of stuff, jam gravy.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
Yeah, I love light as a Georgia r.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
That's Gelgia, Doldia.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
There are a lot of different types of American biscuits,
some much more difficult to wrangle together. It's the beaten biscuit,
drop biscuit, cathead biscuit, buttermilk biscuit, sweet biscuit, sweet potato biscuit,
the Red Lobster cheddar bay biscuit. I have told Lauren,
and now I will share with you. I have this
dream of going to Red Lobster, ordering their nicest bottle
(05:45):
of red wine and just eating the cheddar Bay biscuits.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
I think this is a valid dream that we can
make come to pass. Like I think that's the mark
of a good dream.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
You know, I agree, and I one day I shall
happily be munching on Jetnabey biscuits and drinking my medium price.
And I also, infamously to me, at least, because I've
never shared this video with anybody, tried to make a
social video when we first started of me making buttermilk biscuits.
(06:15):
Remember after we got that buttermilk from Banner Butters. Oh yeah, yeah,
I tried to make buttermilk biscuits and it was a disaster,
a hilarious sticky disaster. And it's great because I couldn't
stop filming because my was everywhere and it was sticking,
just increasingly panicked more and more.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
I still wish that I had been there, because it's
really easy to correct sticky biscuits. You just add a
little bit more flour until it evens out again. That's
all you really have to do.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
I think I was near DearS, like it was slowly
devouring me. Uh huh. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
This is also why it's important to add your milk
product and small amounts just until it comes together.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
I was so excited about that.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
You just added at all? Yeah, perfect, yeah, oh no.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
Maybe I'll post it. It is kind of funny, I
think at the beginning, I'm so upbeaten optimistic about it.
According to the recipe, no fools can mess that up,
but they don't know what kind of fool I am.
And then cut to oh my goodness, what do I
do anyway?
Speaker 2 (07:23):
Well, you made it through.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
I did.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
You're a stronger person for.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
It, Thank you. I won't forget that, and I haven't
tried again since. But maybe one of these days.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
We'll work on it. With our powers combined, we can
cook a Southern meal.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
Yes, But back to that terminology. Why the difference in
terminology though?
Speaker 2 (07:42):
Oh yeah, okay, So the biscuits that we American English
speakers think of today when we hear the word, these
fluffy things that come from the South are a relatively
recent invention and bear little resemblance to what the word
biscuit referred to throughout history. We will get into that,
but first, biscuit science.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
I do sound the best kind of.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
Science, all right? Oh man, and y'all will get to
talk about chemical leaven nurse.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
It's like cirkeds. It's exciting, we promise.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
It gets excited about gas bubbles. I don't know, all right.
So baking soda, which I mentioned earlier, is the street
name for sodium bicarbonate. If you've ever used a bath
bomb to make your bathwater all fizzy, that was the
main ingredient. It's this dry powder that reacts with acids
and releases bubbles of carbon dioxide, which makes it a
good replacement in baked goods for a yeast, which also
(08:37):
release carbon dioxide bubbles. You just have to wait around
for them to eat sugar, and you know fart out
the carbon dioxide.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
It's lovely. It is.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
You want bubbles and baked goods because they get trapped
in the dough as the dough heats and solidifies in
the oven, creating these we pockets that make the bread
fluffy and tender. Baking powder, meanwhile, is made up of
baking soda plus a dry powdered form of an acid,
something like cream of tartar for example. So when you
get the powdered acid wet, it can interact with baking
(09:07):
soda in the mix and produce that carbon dioxide. Recipes
often call for baking powder instead of straight soda, so
that you don't have to add your own acid, which
would more greatly affect the flavor of the final product.
It's also a little bit more reliable in terms of
like how much gas you'd get out of it. Yeah,
you're thinking of the other kind of gas. I'm talking
(09:29):
about the kind that's creating pockets in the bread. Speaking
of consistency, some baking powders even contain two types of
acids to ensure that as much of that sodium bicarbonate
gets activated as possible, and those are called double acting
baking powders. If you've ever seen single acting, that's one acid.
Double acting is too.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
I for a long time, I think I said on
this show, until maybe three or four years ago, I
thought baking soda and baking powder were the same thing. Ah,
and I was just using them interchange changeably. Oh yeah, no,
And I think I sometimes i'd see them both on
a recipe and it never occurred to me, maybe these
are two different things. Why would they list it twice
(10:08):
with different levels of ingredients?
Speaker 2 (10:11):
Some copy editor just wasn't paying attention.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
Yeah, you know what, I think you should add another
half teaspoon of baking soda. I always assumed baking soda
was the real one and baking powder was like, I
don't know, some knockoff of bakings. So I've learned a lot,
and my base goods haven't proved for it.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
I believe that, yeah, yeah, it was great, it is.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
It is okay.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
So the way that you make biscuits is you sift
together your flour and your baking powder to make sure
the powder is evenly distributed and that the flour particles
aren't like cacking up with each other. Then you cut
in cold butter or whatever other solid fat you're using,
and cut in means that you work the fat into
these wee tiny little pieces, evenly distributed it again throughout
(11:00):
the flour mixture. There are more or less, there are
a lot of methods for doing this, and everyone has
an opinion on which is best. I will not presume
to tell y'all that is up to you. This is
a decision you have to make for yourself.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
It's between you and your kitchen maide, you, you and
your biscuit. God.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
Yes, you want the butter to be cold I mentioned cold,
and the pieces of it to be tiny, because It's
not just adding delicious fat into your dough. It's helping
form the structure of the finished biscuit. When your butter
fragments start cold or whatever kind of fat I'm just
going to say butter from here on out. When they're cold,
they're taking up a lot of space in the dough.
(11:39):
So when you put the dough into the oven and
it starts getting hot, the dough will start firming up
just as the butter melts. This will leave these wee
little air pockets in the dough where the granules of
butter used to be, meaning that you wind up with
yet fluffier and flakier biscuits.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
Mmmm m. And I've mentioned before, but my method, my
lazy method, it is you freeze the butter and then
use it greater and grate the butter into the lazy
or clever thank you, I just need someone to understand me.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
It's a valid method, thank you, and way easier than
like chopping it in with knives, which is what I do.
Or yeah anyway, okay, So the last ingredient before you
pop your biscuits and the oven is liquid, usually milk,
maybe buttermilk something like that. This adds water that allows
the proteins in the flour to link up into a tender,
(12:33):
chewy gluten. And also when the dough heats up in
the oven, that water content will boil, forming more air
bubbles that help the lift The liquid milk or whatever
also starts to activate the acids in that baking powder.
Biscuits are generally made with double acting baking powders. One
of the acids they contain won't start reacting with baking
(12:54):
soda until the stuff goes into the oven and gets
up to about one hundred and eighty degrees fahrenheit or
eighty celsius. But the other acid and your double acting
baking powder will start reacting at room temperature as soon
as the liquid is added. And this is why you
want to work biscuit dough quickly and get it into
the oven fast after you add your liquid, because it
(13:15):
will start to deflate if you leave it out too long.
Same goes for any number of quick breads.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
Yes it's true.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
Yeah, so yeah, you mix up your ingredients. You work
the dough quickly and minimally to help the gluten chain
up just enough but not too much. You don't want
chewy biscuits. You roll it out to whatever thickness the
recipe calls for. Cut them with something sharp. This is
important because the blunt edges of a glass will kind
of collapse the internal layers of the dough along the
edges of each biscuit.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
Yeah, I want something sharp that'll prevent rise. Yeah, and
then you get your biscuits in the oven. Science, biscuit science,
biscuits science, so cool, unless you're making drop biscuits and
then you don't cut them. That's a slightly different process
and also cool. Nothing wrong with it.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
Also cool, Yeah, nothing wrong with it.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
Ha.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
The drop biscuit gods are gonna curses terrible biscuits from
here on out. I've already paid my price, gesturing to
someone that's not there. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
Depending on what kind of biscuit you're looking for, there
are so many recipes online that can help you out here.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
Yes, so many recipes videos, what have you. Oh yeah,
And if we're talking about nutrition, it depends on the type.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
But it's fat and flower I mean they're not great
for you, No, I mean they have a little bit
of protein in there. That's good. You know, fat helps
keep you full, that's nice. Ye, it does Whenever I
think of the nutrition of bread products, I think of
that line from Scott Pilgrim versus the World where they're
eating garlic bread and he's like, oh, just eat garlic
bread all the time. And she's like bread makes you fat,
and he's like.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
Bread makes you fat. No. Yeah, just did a like
roller coaster woo motion.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
It's pretty good.
Speaker 1 (15:05):
Yes, and numbers are a bit hard to come by,
but we did find some.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
Yes. As of twenty fifteen, the biscuit was named one
of America's fastest growing menu items by the market research
firm Nations Restaurant News. This is part of what's being
called the rise of breakfast.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
Is that a pun?
Speaker 2 (15:22):
It's a biscuit pun now ha ha. More fast and
fast casual chains are offering breakfast items, and more of
them are offering them all day. The breakfast category is
projected to reach sixty billion dollars a year in value
by twenty nineteen, up from just fifty billion in twenty fifteen.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
I find so interesting about that is in our episode
on Brunch, we talked about how less people are eating
breakfast ye now than ever, But at the same time,
people like breakfast.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
Food, right, just maybe not at breakfast, right.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
The rise of more all day breakfast items a lah
McDonald's facing that pressure to have breakfast all day.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
Yeah, they were like Starbucks offering all of those breakfast
items like breakfast sandwiches and whatever.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
Yeah. But from my own anecdotal experience, as I've mentioned
many times, I've came from a small town and there
weren't that many restaurant options when I was growing up
there. There are a lot more now, But one of the
options was dairy Queen ooh. And it caused traffic jams
in the morning because it was like it didn't have
(16:33):
a parking lot really, it was just right off the road. Wow,
And so people it was next to an intersection, and
people going to all the schools were in the other direction,
so the drive through would be out.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
Causing snaked out onto the road.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
Yeah, like past the intersection.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
Oh my goodness.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
And it got to the point where they were like
forming a road across the street that wasn't there, but
people would go get in line over there. And what
everybody told me they were ordering, because I was always
so confused by this was the biscuits, some variety of
the biscuits all right, from dairy Queen.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
I didn't know that Dairy Queen even served that. Oh
they do, certainly around the Atlanta area. Oh, now, I
wonder okay, all right, history of dairy Queen is a
whole separate episode.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
Oh, I've looked into it. Do you know who owns it?
Speaker 4 (17:19):
Now?
Speaker 1 (17:19):
Why?
Speaker 2 (17:20):
No?
Speaker 1 (17:20):
Warren Buffett?
Speaker 2 (17:21):
What? Yes?
Speaker 1 (17:23):
I looked into it briefly for a Sunday episode. I
could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure Warren Buffett owns it.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
Okay, all right, well, all right, future episode for sure.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
M chill and grill baby. But in the meantime, we
have a lot of really fascinating history about the biscuit
for you, including all that etymology. Yeah, but first we're
gonna pause for a quick break ForWord from our sponsor.
(17:55):
And we're back. Thank you, sponsor, Yes, thank you, And
we're back with our etymological journey. Ooh yeah, ooh ah,
what a fun journey this will be so okay. The
word biscuit comes from a combination of the Latin word biz,
meaning cooked, and coctus, meaning twice, used to describe a
(18:17):
common ration for soldiers of the Roman Empire.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
These biscuits were unpleasant. They were made without any fat
or any leavening agents at all, so they would last
a long time.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
Yeah, And because of that, as you can imagine, it
was popular on long journeys where these biscuits are hard
attack or.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
Biscuits or sea biscuits or ship's biscuits or pilot bread.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
Interesting were faked up to four times to make sure
they'd last the journey. And that reminds me of Hagrid's
rock cakes Harry Potter reference of the episode, which I
have a recipe for. And I'm always kind of like,
why why cook?
Speaker 2 (18:56):
I wonder if they're just like scones.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
They probably are. They probably completely are.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
Said send me the rest, P'll check it out.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
Okay. Also, the French and Italian had similar related words biscuite,
which actually came before the British word and biscotti respectively.
And also King Louis the Fourteen Soldiers called biscuits stone bread,
rock cakes rock cakes indeed, and to soften up these babies,
(19:25):
sailors would sometimes dip them in brine, or they would
break them against their arms to make smaller, easier to
eat pieces. All seemed just okay in the biscuit world.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
Yeah, they maybe weren't tasty, but they were nutritious enough
and lasted quite a bit.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
Mm hmm. By fourteenth century Britain, the word biscuit was
used to describe a sweet cookie like thing. And yes,
grown all you like British listeners, we can't hear you.
That was dried out. Over time, it softened and became
a perfect accompaniment for tea. But language jury dan. In
(20:09):
the seventeen hundreds, the Dutch started using the word koukias
to refer to little cakes. Yep, I bet a lot
of you see where this is going. These little cakes
had a leavening agent that gave them a cakey texture,
and they were overall biscuity, which is confusing in the
(20:29):
context of all of this, but yes, the Dutch word
was adopted in English and lives on as cookie. When
Dutch and English merchants began selling their wares in the
New World, words collide words and worlds. WHOA, what do
you call these things? Heresy? I call them this. After
the American Revolutionary War, Americans were not so into the British,
(20:53):
so they sided with the Dutch when it came to
the great biscuits or cookies debate. The Americans called the
British biscuits by cookies are crackers out of spot, which
I love and totally understand. And Americans took up the
word biscuit and applied it to a round, soft, not
(21:14):
twice baked bread typically served with gravy, which is also
a different meaning in Britain. Gravy does so fun with birds?
Oh yeah, mm hmm, and so does flapjack. What apparently
flapjack means granola in Britain.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
Oh I did know that, did you?
Speaker 1 (21:31):
Yeah, so it's true. Yeah, well one of my nicknames
is flapjack. Oh really, so it takes on a whole
new meaning if it has a different meaning. Goodness, I'm granola.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
I was ordering British snacks at one point and I
got very confused about it. All turned out okay, but.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
I'm relieved to hear that, sincerely, flapjacks are not. I'd
be very disappointed if I ordered what I thought was
pancakes and I got granola. I have to say, but
that's just me. That's just me. And another thing that
I thought was interesting about this whole thing. We've talked
about Nobisco before on the show, The company and how
(22:07):
it stands for National Biscuit Company, which in this context
is interesting. It's one of the biggest, if not the
biggest companies specializing in cookies and crackers. But they use
biscuit in the British sense of the word, and they
are an American company. Yeah, huh huh. Indeed, another thing
that comes up a lot in this conversation around biscuits
(22:29):
is scones. The New York Times tells me the only
ingredients separating basic recipes for both of them are two
tables foods of sugar and an egg, which I have
my doubts.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
Oh, scone aside, Okay, all right, there is a big
difference between what coffee houses here in the States sell
as scones versus what scones have traditionally been. Scones here
have become these stiff, crumbly, super sweet things. If you
get a scone over in the British Isles, you'd likely
be served something a lot like an American biscuit, probably
(23:00):
lightly sweetened. Basically, if you're making what i'd call a
proper scone, and this is something I have an opinion about, yes,
you're adding an egg and using cream instead of milk
in an otherwise basic American biscuit recipe. The extra proteins
and fats make the resulting baked goods a little bit
more cake like, a little bit more like like creamy
textured than Southern biscuits. They make them all the time
(23:20):
and they're fab. Oh yeah, you can make them sweeter, savory.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
Yeah, a whole scone world.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
I love a good cheddar herb scone.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
Oh my gosh, next time you make scones, I'm just
saying I'm around.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
You have to eat them fresh, like piping hot.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
You there, don't worry about that. In fact, you'll be like,
how did she know? I just appear scones. I think
when I was in high school, in our Civics class,
every student got assigned a country and you had to
do a big project on it, and part of that
involved cooking a recipe is associated with the country. I
(23:58):
can't remember if I made scone or crumpets, but they
did not turn out well, and it was part of
your grade. I was really pond about it. Oh, they
were fine, they just kind of blankland yeah and hard.
I don't know what I did wrong, but I have
not had I don't think i've had a proper scone
if I have. It's been a while, so.
Speaker 2 (24:17):
All right, just saying we can rectify this perfect All right.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
Back to the American style biscuit. It is another food
that arose because of limited resources and practicality. When European
settlers first arrived to the New World, they didn't have much.
They were starting from scratch, like you do with a biscuit.
In many cases, this meant that a lot of their
foods were simple and fairly bland. Common food stuffs at
(24:44):
the time were baked ground wheat. Biscuits are baked ground
corn corn bread. Depending on whether you lived in the
North or South.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
Southern mills traditionally were built to process corn, so even
when wheat started coming to the South, the mills there
were sort of crap at grinding it. So for a
long time, flour breads like biscuits were a rich people
food in the South. Everyone else ate corn bread.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
Yeah, and corn bread was also easier to make in
terms of time and equipment. You didn't need a special
pan or an oven, and a corn corn bread is
a different episode. Oh yeah, I can't wait to talk
about pones.
Speaker 2 (25:20):
I can't wait for you to talk about pones.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
We all can't wait about pones, and it's actually very
kind of boring, but.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
You know, we have pone and patience.
Speaker 1 (25:30):
Nonetheless, we do Either of these corn bread or biscuits
could be cheaply spiced up with a bit of gravy
of some sort made from the drippings of roasted meat,
filled out with a pinch of this and that gravy
could make a meal out of those bland breads. By
the time the Revolutionary War worled around, biscuits are cornbread
and gravy seemed to have been relatively commonplace. By the
(25:53):
mid eighteenth century, the biscuit was a staple in the
wealthy American South, but it still wasn't quite the biscuit
we think of today. Because yeast was so costly, people
often made biscuits without this leavening agent. So making biscuits
was a laborious process. I would argue it still is,
but I'm really lazy, apparently terrible at adding milk. In
(26:15):
order to get air in the dough and ensure that
it would rise, biscuit makers had to use the old
elbow breath and really beat the dough and fold it
once baked. This dough resulted in something bread like but sturdier,
all the better for scooping up that gravy.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
Oh yeah, you could.
Speaker 1 (26:34):
Use pearl ash instead of manual labor to get your
biscuits to rise, But that came as a sacrifice of flavor.
I know we've talked about this before. But to get
pearl ash, which is potassium carbonate, folks poured water over
wood ashes already you might be having some. You might
realize why that impacts the flavor. Yeah, the resulting solid
(26:55):
was pearlash. A similar process was used to make lie
by the way, using pearl ash pretty much guaranteed a bitter,
soap like flavor, like cly And that's not what you're
looking for in biscuits. Not really, No, no, at least
not most people. The first recipes for the beaten biscuit
(27:15):
came out of Maryland and Virginia, although I did see
some state debates claiming I'm positive, oh absolutely. All they
called for ingredients wise, was flour, milk, and lard. You
need some sort of tool to beat these things together with, though,
a specialized axe or a wooden mallet or popular options. Oh,
(27:36):
an axe for biscuit.
Speaker 2 (27:38):
I need to know more about this biscuit axe.
Speaker 1 (27:41):
All right, Oh my gosh, it should need one of
your axes, your D and D character, your biscuit axe.
Can she cook? Oh?
Speaker 2 (27:51):
I don't know. That's a good question. I think she can,
but I'm not sure that you really want to eat
a whole.
Speaker 1 (27:56):
Lot of it. This is an important character question for you. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
I'll have to think more about that, all right, but yeah, yeah.
The amount of effort that these beaten biscuits required to make.
We're talking hours of beating air into the dough to
make it so that your biscuits would rise when you
baked them. So the style of biscuit was really only
made by enslaved people for their masters, and it dropped
out of fashion after emancipation.
Speaker 1 (28:21):
After baking soda was invented in the eighteen forties, a
lot of Southern cookbooks published recipes for soda biscuits, which
used baking soda to achieve the desired rising.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
The first baking powder was patented just a little bit
after that in eighteen fifty six.
Speaker 1 (28:37):
A different thing, yes, truly, And we have some more
history for you, But first we have one more quick
break for word from our sponsor, and we're back. Thank
you sponsor, Yes, thank you. There are a couple of
(28:58):
reasons why biscuits took off in the South in the
Southern United States and not so much in the North.
One of the main ones has to do with the
types of flour used in these regions. In the North,
you were likely to find tougher, more gluteny wheats that
could survive the cold winters, whereas in the South you
(29:20):
were more likely to find softer wheats with less protein
that made for fluffier, springier baked goods. Before national distribution
was a possibility, bleached all purpose flowers were pretty limited
to the Southern American states. This is also part of
the reason why the North took to bagels more than
the South did. Oh yeah h in part because of
(29:41):
the amount of labor and potential costs. At first, biscuits
were largely something you'd have on Sundays only in the South.
To save time and money, large clumps of dough were
dropped on a baking sheet, giving us another type of biscuit,
the cathead biscuit. If you couldn't afford or fine flour,
you might use the abundant sweet potato in its place.
(30:04):
Abundant in the South. The sweet potato biscuit is still
alive and well today in the South. By the way,
we have a pretty popular I guess it's a chain.
Speaker 2 (30:12):
It's a local chain.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
Yeah, Highland Bakery. They have sweet potato biscuits. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:17):
Around the middle of the nineteenth century, flour milling technology improved,
and meanwhile Midwestern wheat production was being stepped up, and
the end result was that better, cheaper flour became available
for everyone to buy.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
In the South. Yes, and then we get Alexander P. Ashbourne,
an African American grocery store owner out of California. He
is the lives of biscuit makers with his invention of
the biscuit cutter in eighteen seventy five. It was spring loaded,
it came in different shapes. I got very excited about it.
(30:52):
He also was involved in three patents for refining and
processing coconut oil, by the way. Ah, and then in
nineteen thirty Lively Willoughby out of Louisville, Kentucky invented refrigerator biscuits. Though. Yeah,
the dough pushed into those cardboard twos.
Speaker 2 (31:11):
Oh high pressure, terrifyingly high pressure.
Speaker 1 (31:13):
Very scary, right, It's frightening. He got the patent in
nineteen thirty one, which was acquired by a local company
almost immediately and then acquired by Pillsbury Mills and nineteen
fifty one ns that Pillsbury Mills. According to the Encyclopedia
of Consumer Brands, Willoughby's invention was sort of a mishap.
To store biscuits, Willoughby would slice the biscuits, wrap them
(31:36):
in tinfoil, and then push them into cardboard tubes for
storage in the ice box. When he would go to
retrieve them, the compressed dough would explode. Allegedly, Willoughby would
send his son up a ladder to scrape the dough
off the ceiling, I think to repackage. But this did
not deter him, and he kept experimenting until he came
(31:58):
up with a less explosive way to store. Do less explosive,
and this was a big deal. Take this first line
of an early display ad out of the Atlanta Constitution.
Once in a lifetime, once in a generation, such things happen.
Speaker 2 (32:13):
Excavation point sounds like you're talking about Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Speaker 1 (32:16):
This is great, it's true. I like it, but it's
just a biscuit through a biscuit, like I kind of
alluded to. I loved those the Grand Slam biscuits when
I was a kid that had all the layers. It
said at one hundred layers. I don't know if that's true,
but I would put a different I would alternate butter
jam butter jam. Oh dang all of the layes.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
Oh, that sounds delicious.
Speaker 1 (32:40):
I also really like the crescent rolls, and yeah, I
was terrified of opening the tube. I used to make
my mom do it. They were launched in nineteen sixty five,
by the way, with the tagline popping Fresh and then aside.
Every time I hear Willoughby, I think of that Twilight
Zone episode.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
Does anyone else anyone let us know?
Speaker 1 (33:01):
I really want to know. I really want to know.
I think it's called next Stop Willoughby, so it's easy
to find should you want to.
Speaker 2 (33:08):
I'm just going to put that out there.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
Another biscuit innovation in nineteen eighty three, White Lily and
Yes the Flower brand came out with self rising flour
with white winter wheat.
Speaker 2 (33:21):
This already has the chemical leaveners added in Yeah, h
winter wheat. By the way, if you were wondering about that,
which I was, and went on a very large deep
dive that was ultimately fruitless, which was my favorite kind
of deep dive.
Speaker 1 (33:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:36):
Winter wheat is a category of types of wheat that
are typically planted in the fall and allowed to germinate
over the winter and they start rising up over the spring,
rather than less sturdy types that are typically planted in
the spring. But it's really complicated, and I guess we
have to do a whole episode on wheat someday, but
it's going to be so massive, so I'm honestly not
(33:57):
looking forward to it. So just forget that I said anything.
Speaker 1 (34:00):
Okay, I have a really lame fun but I'm gonna
make it. It's dull like Homer Simpson. Oh not Laurn't sitting
back like oh Annie, you gotta let Annie be Annie.
You know what helped popularize the biscuit outside of the South?
(34:21):
What Kentucky Fried Chicken as more and more popped up
across the US and the world.
Speaker 2 (34:28):
Also other rival chicken chains like Bojangles, Chick fil A,
and Popeye'es. Yeah, in the past few years, these chains
have opened thousands of new locations around the world, introducing
more and more people to American biscuits.
Speaker 1 (34:40):
Yeah. And as I've said before, in my personal experience
traveling Kentucky, Fried Chicken is probably the restaurant chain, fast
food chain and icee second most when I've traveled McDonald's,
KFC and Subway. Right.
Speaker 2 (34:57):
Yeah, when we visited that first KFC in Kentucky, their
biscuit was totally decent. It was good. Yeah, I liked it.
We tipped it in something I think, I think the gravy.
I think the chicken, yeah, or maybe yeah, because I
had mashed potatoes, so I tipped it in the mashed potato.
G That's right, good, totally decent. I have an ending
quote from that same article by Neilda Hill that I
(35:18):
referenced at the top. She was kind of waxing poetic
about how biscuits bring people together, how the dough is
the tie that binds us all in the South, and
she said, rich, poor, black, white schooled, unschooled, churched, irreligious
biscuits seem to be the one thing other than humidity
that Southerners have in common, next to jazz. They may
(35:41):
be the South's great contribution to civilization.
Speaker 1 (35:44):
Get it, biscuit, It's really funny because my friend's cat's
name is biscuit.
Speaker 2 (35:51):
That's a good name for a cat, isn't that. Yeah, yeah,
making biscuits when they' kneading. Yeah, sharks, sharp pointy biscuits.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
Yeah, that's a wonderful quote. And uh, we're gonna have
to get some biscuits and scones, all right.
Speaker 2 (36:08):
Well, he looks so disappointed. This is this is wonderful news.
Speaker 1 (36:14):
I can't get them quickly enough.
Speaker 2 (36:16):
Oh okay, I see, I understand now.
Speaker 4 (36:23):
And that brings us to the end of this classic episode.
We hope that you enjoyed it as much as we
enjoyed bringing it back. As always, if you have any
thoughts about this, any recipes, any memories I have to
tell you kind of unrelated. I got moved to tears
(36:44):
the other day by a sudden encounter with Tim tims
that I wasn't expecting, which are called biscuits in some countries,
But I was shocked at our emotional saw them so
fucking have that really powerful impact. And I feel like
biscuits is one of those things that people.
Speaker 2 (37:02):
Have familial right share, like childhood memories that are wrapped
up in the people that you love and the share
the meals that you shared.
Speaker 1 (37:10):
And yeah, so many types too.
Speaker 4 (37:14):
Oh yeah, well, listeners, If you would like to write
to us, you can. Our email is hello at saborpod
dot com.
Speaker 2 (37:22):
We're also on social media. You can find us on Twitter, Facebook,
and Instagram at saber pod and we do hope to
hear from you. Save is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my Heart Radio, you can visit the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows. Thanks as always to our super producers Dylan
Fagan and Andrew Howard. Thanks to you for listening, and
we hope that lots more good things are coming your
(37:43):
way
Savor News
Hosts And Creators
Dylan Fagan
Anney Reese
Lauren Vogelbaum
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