How to make Biscuits ?

[Klaus]

Hi,

last weekend i enjoyed Jeremiah Johnson for the 99 or so on turn ... and i asking me how did he made this kind Biscuits...
Did somebody have any idea ?

thx for help
Klaus :wink:

 

[Black Hand]

Hollywood fantasy. Baking powder, the primary leavener in biscuits, was not invented until the 1890s.

Koln, a beautiful city. I was there to see the Tutankhamen exhibit in the 1980s....

 

[Billnpatti]

Since baking powder had not been invented, his recipe would have been different from that used today. Had he actually made biscuits, he most likely would have used a sourdough starter as his levening. Sourdough starter is made by mixing a portion of flour with a small amount of sugar and allowing it to sit and become contaminated by natural yeast from the air. Once it starts to ferment and bubble, more flour and sugar is added to make a thin paste. This can be kept for a considerable time in an unsealed container. When used, half is removed to be used in making your bread or biscuits and more flour and sugar is added to make up for the amount that you removed for your bread. The sourdough starter that you removed is mixed into the biscuit recipe and allowed to sit until it starts to rise. The dough is then cut into biscuits and baked.

 

[redwing]

Soda Springs are very common in the Mtn. States. A small amount of soda water and flour will rise to make bread. This would be very much like the 7-Up Bread of today. The Soda Water is mixed with Alcohol to make a quick beer. No not everyone carried Sour Dough starters, only in the movies. :hmm:

 

[boar]

The way to carry your starter is to pour a cup in flour sack and make a ball. When you camp take the ball and add water to make a batter. Let work and your ready to make biscuits. I have made thousand of them. You can add a little hardwood ashes to them to raise them more. :thumbsup: Dilly

 

[BenCoogle]

This is what he may have used. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearlash


The book "Crow Killer" says Baking Powder if I remember right but was written after the real Jeremiah's (John "Liver Eatin'" Johnston's) death in 1904.

Ben

 

[Black Hand]

This is what he may have used. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearlash

And where exactly did he find it? The hardwood ash method is way more likely, though I doubt it was very common in the west.

 

[zimmerstutzen]

Interesting question, besides sour dough. I've seen a recipe that called for cream of tartar instead of soda.

I also remember hearing about something called soda solararus (?) in a really old folk song.

I have two old recipe books from the early 1800's. Gonna have to check them.

But then again, how did folks make cake before the invention of baking soda, as in when Josephine of France said "Let them eat cake."

 

i believe rather that was Marie Antionette, allegedly, who said that.
Josephine was the wife of Napolean, and a bit later, i think.

 

[zimmerstutzen]

from the 1596 cookbook called Goode Huswife's Jewel by Thomas Dawson.

To make fine bisket bread - Take a pound of fine flower, and a pound of sugar, and mingle it together, a quarter of a pound of Annis-seedes, foure eggs, two or three spoonfulls of rosewater put all these into an earthen panne. And, with a slyce of wood beat it the space of two houres, then fill your moulds half full, your moulds be of tinne, and then lette it into your oven, being so whot as it were for cheat bread and let it stande one houre and an halfe: you must annoint your moulds with butter before you put in your stuffe, and when you will occupie of it, slice it thinne and dry it in the oven, your oven beeing no whotter than you may abide your hand in the bottome.

 

[rafterob]

Baking soda was around earlier than baking powder so, it may be possible for that time period. More than likely biscuits at that time would not have been leavened and a little heavier than what we are now used to. I know it was common to just make a simple dough with flour, water, salt and lard then wrap it on a stick and bake it over the fire or cook it on a hoe blade over the fire.

 

The development of leavened bread can probably also be traced to prehistoric times. Yeast spores occur everywhere, including the surface of cereal grains, so any dough left to rest will become naturally leavened. Although leavening is likely of prehistoric origin, the earliest archaeological evidence is from ancient Egypt. Scanning electron microscopy has detected yeast cells in some ancient Egyptian loaves. However, ancient Egyptian bread was made from emmer wheat and has a dense crumb. In cases where yeast cells are not visible, it is difficult, by visual examination, to determine whether the bread was leavened. As a result, the extent to which bread was leavened in ancient Egypt remains uncertain.

There were multiple sources of leavening available for early bread. Airborne yeasts could be harnessed by leaving uncooked dough exposed to air for some time before cooking. Pliny the Elder reported that the Gauls and Iberians used the foam skimmed from beer to produce "a lighter kind of bread than other peoples." Parts of the ancient world that drank wine instead of beer used a paste composed of grape juice and flour that was allowed to begin fermenting, or wheat bran steeped in wine, as a source for yeast. The most common source of leavening however was to retain a piece of dough from the previous day to utilize as a form of sourdough starter.

 

[Klaus]

Good Morning

thx a lot for your information and the lesson in history of making bread.I`ve never thought about it.Unfortunately there are too much " Hollywood "in the most of the Movies
next time at camp i will try to make some biscuits ...
@ Black Hand, it`s a long time ago that you visit Koeln, a lot of Cityscape has been changed ... some larger as in the last Century
Maybe you will take the change and comes on over next time :wink:

thx a again
Klaus

 

[BenCoogle]

I should have sent another link. Pearlash is made from wood ashes and they work too. We're talking about the same thing.
http://www.foodreference.com/html/fquickbreads.html
http://thebradfordplace1863.homestead.com/leavenings.html

He could have obtained the Pearlash, or Salaratus when he bought the flour.

Ben

 

[Black Hand]

I should have sent another link. Pearlash is made from wood ashes and they work too. We're talking about the same thing.
http://www.foodreference.com/html/fquickbreads.html
http://thebradfordplace1863.homestead.com/leavenings.html

He could have obtained the Pearlash, or Salaratus when he bought the flour.

Ben

Ben,
It is not so much as to whether he could have obtained it, but whether it was available in the back-country stores. Seems unlikely to me....
Albert

 

[BenCoogle]

This is opinion of course but I think it would have been common by Johnston's time. He came west after the heyday of the Mountain Man and the West was rapidly becoming filled up and civilized.

In the book it speaks of him and X. Biedler eating ice cream on a riverboat. He also cut wood for the riverboats.

Ben

 

[Birdman]

Black Hand I think its time fer ya to do some reading up on the food wares of the times. You will be amazed by the variaty of foods shipped west and the same for what was grown at different trading posts after they were first set up. It has shocked me over the years when I have run across docum( I didn't save any, thats not my bag)about food stuffs. Their diet was alot more refined then we would think, especially the upper management types. They had peachs, cakes n pies, tarts, several types of breads(rye, wheat, white) biscuts, quails eggs n all sorts of veggies, various types of meat n sausages. Having something that would improve bread making and make it more palitable ought to fit right in, like I said though, I read this stuff well before I knew about saving docum on the period. the info is out there n not all that tuff to find.

 

[Blizzard of '93]

my bet is sourdough patties fried in bear fat.

 

[Black Hand]

You will be amazed by the variaty of foods shipped west and the same for what was grown at different trading posts after they were first set up. It has shocked me over the years when I have run across docum( I didn't save any, thats not my bag)about food stuffs. Their diet was alot more refined then we would think, especially the upper management types. They had peachs, cakes n pies, tarts, several types of breads(rye, wheat, white) biscuts, quails eggs n all sorts of veggies, various types of meat n sausages. Having something that would improve bread making and make it more palitable ought to fit right in, like I said though, I read this stuff well before I knew about saving docum on the period. the info is out there n not all that tuff to find.

Agreed. My comment is directed at the availability of chemical leaveners specifically. It is unlikely that they were easily available except in larger population centers. The movie JJ was in the back-country with little contact with traders and the like. I can see flour, sugar, salt and some other basic necessities. I can't see specialty items such as leaveners..

 

[zimmerstutzen]

Any two substances that create carbon dioxide gas can be leaveners. Even the lye in wood ash. Salt and egg will cause dough to rise. Certainly yeast, and there are all kinds of wild yeast spores blowing in the winds.

Granted, he wasn't to likely to have a ready source of Arm and Hammer sodium bicarbonate.

But most folks knew that black willow bark tea reduced fevers and pain. Contains the same active ingredient as aspirin. Not much stretch to believe their were other natural chemical leaveners in the boonies.