SC - Hammer-beaten biscuits

[Philip & Susan Troy]

"Adler, Chris" wrote:
> 
> Yes, I've seen pictures of this method. IIRC, it's in the 27-volume
> Time-Life set of world cuisine from the 1950s that my mother gave me and
> which I have at home. It's in the volume on Southern USA cuisine.
> 
> Off the top of my head, it's a method of making baking soda/buttermilk-type
> biscuits. Once the butter is cut into the dry ingredients, the cook
> repeatedly pounds the dough with a hammer for upwards to a half an hour. The
> bizarre photo I recall is of a frail-looking elderly lady with glasses
> merrily bashing away at some dough with a humongous hammer.

I believe the aforementioned "Maryland's Way" has photos of beaten
biscuits beaten with the blunt side of a hatchet-head, along with one
recipe for beaten biscuits and another for what it calls "Maryland
biscuits"  which caught my eye for the presence of baking powder, but in
such a proportion that it could not be a leavening, at least not a
really significant one: it calls for something like 1/2 tsp baking
powder for 2 lbs of flour. Normal proportions in household-type recipes
would be more like 3-4 tsp baking powder per pound of flour.
 
> I've always thought that this would overwork the gluten and thus make the
> biscuits tough... but I've since learnt that Southern cooks tend to use
> flour with much less gluten and protein than I do in the North, so I guess
> it would just thoroughly incorporate the butter. I've personally never tried
> this method for my biscuits.

I gather what it does is _over_-work the gluten to the point where it
starts to break down, as with Prince biscuit, as well as aerate the
dough through lamination, so that there's some oven spring to give it
rise in lieu of leavening. I notice that most of these recipes seem to
use far less shortening than comparable recipes for baking-powder
biscuits, which might support the idea of deliberately over-worked gluten.

Adamantius
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com