[Sca-cooks] Two questions

[Terry Decker]

>> These days tou are more likely to find it on the shortbread rather  than 
>> in it.
>>
>> You now have me wondering about the evolution of shortbread and  whether 
>> or not this recipe is technically biscuit, as it first bakes  the flour, 
>> then bakes the fine cake.
>
> It does looks as if someone, somewhere, made the logical leap and  figured 
> out that excess water leads to gluten development and  toughness. This 
> just appears to be a sort of bass-ackwards (by modern  viewpoint) method 
> of addressing that. Dry the flour and use clotted  cream, rather than 
> butter, which still has a bit less water in it than  clotted cream.
>

Baking the flour coagulates the gluten and produces a "nuttier" flavor. 
And yeah, it does reduce the water content.  That makes a lot of sense in 
terms of this recipe.

> I'm not sure if I'd go with the biscuit comparison: if the second  baking 
> is, as usually seems the case, a means of preserving and/or  rendering 
> more palatable  previously baked item -- for example,  anisette toasts, or 
> something like that, where you bake a loaf, slice  it, and then bake the 
> slices till hard, brittle, crisp, and just  slightly browned.
>
> How about this: if you had to toast fresh seeds (as is done in some 
> confit recipes, for example), and then add them to anise bisket, would 
> they be triscuits? A less frivolous question would be, does baking an 
> ingredient constitute part of the theoretically mandatory twice- cooking 
> of biscuit, which normally calls for twice-cooking the entire  product in 
> some form?
>
> Adamantius

I'm a little curious about how biscuit came to be used for all things cookie 
like in GB and I was thinking off the top of my uncaffienated head when I 
wrote that.  Still it is an interesting question.

Triskets?  That's an interesting idea.

Beqar