The Southern Minute Podcast 3 – Beaten Biscuits

They have been known to be better than a flat rock to get at least seven skips across a pond. It’s about the circumference of one and a half Oreo cookies and has the heft of a hand-sized piece of field chert, hence the skippin’ rock reference. I’m talking about that simple and delicious Southern culinary pleasure— the beaten biscuit.

This unleavened staff of life, is guaranteed to hush teething babies,  keep housecats occupied for hours, and add two inches of height to most Southern kids’ growth—all with just a handful of flour, salt, cold lard and water.

Welcome to “The Southern Minute.” I’m your host Cave Buckner.

Nobody really knows the history of this biscuit, but it appeared sometime in the late 1700s, quite possibly through Virginia or Maryland ports, because this biscuit could be the kissing cousin to the sea-worthy hardtack and they didn’t call it “hard “for nothing.

Due to the lack of preservation methods, unleavened biscuits could keep for several months in an airtight container. “Unleavened” means without a rise ingredient like baking soda, because it didn’t exist at that time.

According to Craig Claiborne’s Southern Cooking, these biscuits undergo is severe beating: they are banged with a "rollin’ pin, hammer, or side of an axe,” or they are "pounded with a blunt instrument . . . even a tire iron will do . . . . One book instructs the cook to “use boys to do it"—that is, beat the biscuits vigorously—"at least 200 times".

Traditionally, these biscuits were a Southern canapé, sliced horizontally through their middle girth and spread with butter, jelly and thin slices of cured country ham. They were also used like crackers to sop up soup, gravy or molasses syrup.

Because of the work required to knead the dough, 30 minutes to an hour of kneading and folding, special roller stations called “brakes” were manufactured. These were steel roller devices mounted on a marble slab. Cooks would run the unleavened dough through the rollers at least 60 times or more.

Historians can trace the Southern regional popularity of the beaten biscuit by locating biscuit brakes. The late John Egerton, in his Southern Food book, says the strongest tradition survives in a narrow band stretching from the Kentucky bluegrass to the low hills of northern Alabama.

The biscuit has always been popular across the Upper South, which may have something to do with the popularity of cured country ham production. Like milk and cookies, it’s assumed that if you’re makin’ beaten biscuits, you’ve got access to a country ham.

So, for all of you intrepid cooks with a food processor, if you don’t have an axe or a tire iron, and you possess a little common sense, check out the beaten biscuit recipe at the CaveBuckner.com website.

You’ve been listening to the Southern Minute and I’m your host Cave Buckner, wishing you blue skies and happy gatherings with family, friends and pets.

ORIGINAL RECIPE

Sift a quart of flour into a bowl or tray, add half a teaspoon salt, then cut small into it a teacup of very cold lard. Wet with cold water—ice water is best—into a very stiff dough.

Lay on a floured block, or marble slab, and give one hundred strokes with a mallet or rolling pin. Fold afresh as the dough beats thin, dredging in flour if it begins to stick. The end of beating is to distribute air well through the mass, which, expanding by the heat of baking, makes the biscuit light.

The dough should be firm, but smooth and very elastic. Roll to half-inch thickness, cut out with a small round cutter, prick lightly all over the top, and bake in steady heat to a delicate brown. Too hot an oven will scorch and blister, too cold an one makes the biscuit hard and clammy. Aim for the Irishman's "middle exthrame."

There are sundry machines which do away with beating. It is possible also to avoid it by running the dough, after mixing, several times through a food-chopper. Also beaten biscuit can be closely imitated by making good puff paste, rolling, cutting out, pricking and baking—but rather more quickly than the real thing.

All these are expedients for those who live in apartments, where the noise of beating might be held against good neighborhood. Householders, and especially suburban ones, should indulge in the luxury of a block or stone or marble slab—and live happy ever after, if they can but get cooks able and willing to make proper use of it.

Williams, Martha McCulloch. “Grace Before Meat.” Dishes and Beverages of the Old South, McBride, Nast & Co, New York, New York, 1913, pp. 11–12.