TLDR: Different kinds of wheat in the flour (softer, with less gluten). The soft wheat flour is sort of hard to get if you aren't a commercial baker, but you can get it on Amazon, although it's $10 instead of $2.50 like regular flour.
TLDR: you must use a soft wheat flour such as
White Lily, Martha White, or Southern Biscuit. Here's a URL where they make/show biscuits made with all 3 brands:
vonseel says>"Hard to believe an arbitrary ranking like that, white lily seems to be the most widely mentioned brand when it comes to southern flours"
What's arbitrary about it?
Judgment of food ingredients should be based upon taste, flavor, texture and appearance of the results rather than upon the number of Google results, say. Now _that_ would be "arbitrary".
I was also going to mention this: cake flour for it's low protein levels. In determining what you're cooking/baking, the brand matters far less than the actual type of flour.
Cake / 'biscuits' (my idea of a biscuit is a solid thing to dip in tea, how British of me, but anyway) flour: about 8-9g of protein per 100 grams of flour.
All-purpose flour: 11-12 grams of protein per 100 grams of flour.
Bread flour: 13-14 grams of protein per 100 grams of flour.
'Pastas' vary a lot. Italian-style uses high-protein durum wheat, which is about 14g/100g. On the opposite end, Chinese jiaozi (steamed/boiled dumplings) use low-protein content (8-9g/100g) to give a very smooth texture.
I'm curious if flour in the US is sold with such nutritional labeling: protein, carbohydrate, fat, salt, etc, measurements per standardised measure (in the EU and much of the world, this is per 100g)?
Makes you wonder why we don't sell flour by protein content. Meaning, instead of "cake flour", sell "flour, 6% by wheat protein, good for cakes."
Maybe flour producers ought to have to label protein content on the label (even in small text), so that it's easier to find the right flour for recipes.
Indeed: here's a recipe and discussion of protein levels from 11 years ago that talks about White Lily and how to substitute a mix of cake flour and bread flour (and what amounts of baking powder and soda to add to become "self-rising")
When I lived in Austin I tried several times to make biscuits. While I love the tortillas and kolaches you can get in Central Texas, I was homesick for a good biscuit. And I never could get them to rise like they should. I tried all the different kinds of flour available (Gold Medal, the HEB "Hill Country" all-purpose flour, and so on) and none of them produced anything but hockey pucks.
Baking powder and/or baking soda need to be added to biscuit dough to make biscuits rise.
Self rising flour is sold premixed with some baking powder, but I tend to add an extra half teaspoon of baking powder per cup of self rising flour when I make biscuits or pancakes with it.
All purpose flour doesn't include any baking powder or baking soda.
It's fairly close to the old school southern recipe, although lard was traditionally used in addition to butter and many recipes added a teaspoon of sugar and a quarter teaspoon of baking soda.
You can add a couple of teaspoons of bacon grease with your buttermilk to get closer to the traditional recipe.
The lard from traditional "lard" hogs that most of those old recipes were written towards is not the same chemical composition of lard rendered from today's meat hogs. Not a knock against your recommendation of bacon grease...lard hog lard was healthier and had a lower melting point.
To add further confusion to the mix, we reserve cookies for a specific type of biscuit in Britain. They're only the slightly chewy, rather than crisp crunchy biscuits. :)
The article confused me at first because of this. I saw a scone not a biscuit. I make chocolate biscuits on regular basis - this fact alone would have horrified some and delighted others.
Southern biscuits aren't homogenous like scones are. A big part of the appeal is the interleaved layers of fat and dough which result in a flaky product. Scones are more crumbly.
I've heard that this is also why American baguettes are so brutally hard (even when fresh). They're supposed to be closer to crispy, not a dental hazard.
Baguettes are supposed to be made with high-protein wheat / bread flour. Proper Southern Biscuits are supposed to be made with low-protein flour.
I'm somewhat surprised: in my grocery store, there are "cake flour", "bread flour", and "all purpose flour" in the flour section. It only took a brief search to learn the difference (and which had higher or lower protein counts).
Further research (actually book: "On Cooking"), describes the uses of each flour. In effect: high-protein causes gluten formation, which is necessary for a proper "doughy" bread like Baguette, but is counter-productive for southern-style biscuits.
Possibly, but people are pretty aware of the flour difference. Even back in the 60s Julia Child mentioned it in her cookbook (Relevant TV episode: https://youtu.be/9iH3hjDUhWw)
I suspect the real difference is in the customers. I've heard people arguing over which bagels or donuts are superior, but I've never heard such a conversation for baguettes.
I suspect that's mostly due to par baking, since a lot, arguably most, of the grocery store baguettes are pre-made, par baked, and shipped frozen. They're then baked again in the store, which often leaves them soft and chewy or rock hard, depending on how they're baked a 2nd time around.
Lots of dough conditioners are also common, which helps make them soft. Often too soft, in fact, so they overcook them.
I was slightly dubious (what sort of monster would use bread flour to make a biscuit?) so I investigated further. King Arthur all purpose flour is made from hard wheat (as is their bread flour). BUT their self-rising flour is made from soft wheat.
A few years ago I spent some time learning to make breads and similar baking. Hobbyist level stuff. King Arthur was recommended brand. I have made biscuits once but found it difficult to get them light and airy. It wouldn’t surprise me if the White Lily brand is just phenomenally better for biscuits, for some reason related to the plants used or production process.
An aside...they quote Sarah Simmons in the article. She’s a restauranteur in my city (Columbia, S.C.) and has done amazing things for the city’s food scene in the last couple years.
Or you could alter the recipe. I've made baking powder biscuits any number of times (flour, salt, baking powder, milk, and butter) with very serviceable results.
I've always had good results just using the recipe from the back of the Clabber Girl bakung powder tin. I've found making fluffy biscuits has more to do with how you cut in the butter and work the dough than much else.
Okay, but the Brits have systematically forgotten to pronounce the letter "H" in front of words except when it comes in front of "herbs", of all things. I dunno if we can trust you guys on matters of language!
Hey, I'm from Yorkshire and I don't pronounce any aitches, you stole the 'erb thing from us.
The non aitch pronunciation thing isn't common though, unless your only experience of English is the new Dr Who.
We pronounce all of our H's including herb, hotel, hospital and any other word of French origin. It's Americans that bizarrely become French on matters of cuisine such as 'erbs and "bleu" cheese. If only the food itself was more like the French, eh?
It's important to note that when pronouncing the letter H itself it does not begin with an H. Pronouncing it like "haitch" will make you sound uneducated in Britain.
Why? The modern American accent is closer to how both Americans and Brits talked before they split. Received Pronunciation is a fairly recent invention.
And we wish you'd learn that not every Latin-derived word with a long "e" spelled it "oe" or "ae". And that you'd stop insisting on "dual carriageway" as a term for roads that have only ever existed in the age of internal combustion. And that you'd learn what a jumper actually is. And how to pronounce the letter "r". And that you'd understand that if you've "lost a stone" it means a jewel fell out of your ring, not that you're on a diet. And for that matter, that you'd pick a system of weights and measures and stick to it. And that you'd clarify whether there is in fact any type of food in existence that cannot somehow be classed as "pudding".
Dual carriageways don’t just carry motorised traffic. Bicycles can legally use them, even though cars will be travelling at up to 70mph. They are distinct to motorways, which also have a maximum speed of 70mph but a minimum speed (in free flowing traffic) of 50mph, making cycling illegal on them.
There's nothing special about dual carriageway. A carriageway is simply a way that is wide enough and smooth enough for a carriage to pass. It's still a useful distinction because cars have the same requirements, but "carway" sounds silly.
The word road comes from the word ride which is still used today to refer to bridleways in Britain (for example, in Hyde Park: the North Ride and the South Ride). Road is therefore a much more general word and is used to refer to many more things than carriageways like railway lines, tunnels and even areas of water near shores.
As for the other stuff, it's true that British and American have both diverged from a common root. The best example is with -ise or -ize endings. Neither is completely correct because some words originally had one and some had the other. The Oxford English Dictionary reflects the original endings in its spellings. But at some point Britain standardised on one and America standardised on the other. Maybe -ise looks nicer but -ize looks cooler? Who knows...
I've lost the stone. Can you see it? I've looked everywhere and can't find it.
Re weights an measures. We changed it so we wouldn't be doing something different to the rest of entire world.
Puddings are good, why not make everything a pudding? More seriously a pudding used to be a meat based thing (Yorkshire pudding had dripping in) that went sweet. Kind of like why mince pies don't have mince in them.
With the jumper, I assume you would like us to call it a 'sweater'? If its making you sweat, take it off!
I don't know what you're talking about with my r pronunciation. I pronounce my arghs perfectly. I assume you probably pronounce them weirdly though.
America and Britain. Two nations divided by a common language. Winston Churchill.
We are fairly inconsistent about use of metric in general use in the UK - for example: last weekend I drove 79 miles at 60 or 70mph to walk 21km and climb about 900m to go up two hills at about 930m and 940m which I feel compelled to climb as they are more than 3000ft high!
I want to make a comment about not being able to decide whether we are fully adopting European things or not, but I won't.
I think a part of it is that imperial units are human sized and quite useful. A pint of beer is the natural correct unit of measurement. A cm is just a bit too small for a guessed at measure, an inch or foot can be understood to be inaccurate generalisations. Metric equivalents not so much.
Road signage is a mess though. Distance: Miles, except shorter distances: Metres. Both shortened to 'm'.
Litre, cm, metre - all are human-size units that are useful. It's easier for me to ad-hoc measure a cable in metres than in feet because the distance between my hand and my opposite shoulder across my chest is about 1 metre. Similarly, a kg of sugar weighs about the same as a litre of milk, and I've been drinking milk from litre cartons all my life. (As a kid in Ireland, there were three main sizes in the shops, 1 pint and 1 litre cartons and 2 litre bottles. 1 pint was always too small for a family of three - you'd run out before it went off.)
I think you're labouring under parochialism of measurement. Grow up under a different system and you'll see there's nothing special or advantageous about the imperial system at all.
I find the imperial system totally confusing - I'd actually prefer if we moved to metric for driving - we've used metric for petrol/diesel volumes for ages.
Hey don't get me wrong, I would rather just have one (metric) system. I grew up with metric in school etc.
If I'm measuring something its metric, but if I'm eyeballing something its probably imperial.
I would guess its the origin of the units, I just find it easier to guestimate a foot rather than a metre.
I do not wish to counter with a list of Americanisms that British people find infuriating, as life is short and we might all expire before I was done.
I will note that — unlike in Europe where metrication and SI units have been legal requirements since 1973 and are in wide use outside of the scientific community — America has no agreed upon “system of weights and measures” as you put it, instead considering the adoption of any standard “voluntary”, which makes a farce of the very idea of standardi[s|z]ation[1].
Metrication in the US and UK are very similar. The US has an actual federal law on the books declaring metric to be the official system of weights and measures nationwide.
And... we still use a mix of systems, including in "official" things like road signage. In much the same way, Brits still order beer by the pint, read their speedometers in miles per hour, etc. etc.
British biscuits are closer to the original biscuits. The word biscuit means "twice cooked" (cuit is still French for cooked). This refers to the kind of biscuits that were taken on ships. They are made by first making a big cake, then chopping it up and cooking the pieces a second time to dry them out.
Such biscuits are still popular with Afrikaaners in South Africa.
Cook and cake have the same origin. Cookie just means "little cake" and therefore is completely correct in the way Americans use it. It just has a different origin to biscuit.
This made me think that there are a million special purposes biscuits. One biscuit for teething children, one biscuit for stomach ache, a biscuit for graduation, and a biscuit for Lake District walks.
Well digestive biscuits are supposed to aid digestion.
Kendal mint cake is for Lake district walks, so you don't need a biscuit.
You do raise a good point about graduation though. I assume it would have to be non crumbly so you don't lose the deposit on your gown, and be able to soak up lots of alcohol.
As biscuits and tea are such an important pairing, you won't be surprised to learn that having a million special purpose biscuits, we have done it with tea, too.
English/Scottish/Irish breakfast and afternoon, innumerable single source and black tea blends, and then there's the mass market blends. PG is the number one selling UK mass market tea but was originally sold as "Digestive tea", then "Pre-Gestee", which was abbreviated by stores to PG, which stuck.
Teabags, of course, are the spawn of satan and should be avoided whenever possible. :)
I'd almost say 'used to be' - most people don't think it's OK nowadays to give a baby/toddler what is essentially a hard lump of sugar that they suck for hours on end.
Source: I'm a parent of young kids, and know dozens of others as a result; I don't know a single person that gave their kid a rusk.
That article goes a bit overboard. Yes, we call a different thing biscuits. (I like our way, honestly, but then, I grew up with that.) What the article declares as "this is gravy, America" is what Americans call gravy. The white stuff, served atop biscuits is also gravy, usually disambiguated by calling it "country gravy". It's mostly a southern thing; my SO from New England gave it a good "WTF is that." the first time I ordered it and she saw it. (I may have ordered it specifically to see it get that reaction, but also b/c it's good.)
But even in the south, we put normal, brown gravy on, e.g., turkey. Country gravy is different and goes well with different things, like chicken-fried steak. (And now I leave you to Google what that is. ;) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_fried_steak )
And don't get me started on the places that serve abnormally shaped, completely unseasoned, deep-fried tater-tots as "hash browns". Ugh.
The white gravy is what we would call white sauce in Britain, and close to what the French would call béchamel (although woe betide you if serve béchamel in France that isn't perfectly white).
In the subcontinent gravy refers to any curry sauce, so there is at least one other well-established usage that differs from the British usage.
For me, Southern American cuisine is very distinctive and unique so I give it free reign on whatever it wants to call things. I object only to some of the silly American names like "French fries" and "Russian dressing".
The one time I tried biscuits and gravy in Texas, I was honestly pretty disgusted - the 'bisuits' were dry and bland, and the 'gravy' was... well, it was horrible. It was kind of like a really badly made bechamel - lumpy, a most unappetising colour (I'm colour blind, but I would have guessed grey), and with the strange additions of some kind of poor quality cheese, and lots and lots of sugar. Just... wrong.
I hope I just had a bad rendition, but it has put me off for life.
Use buttermilk, use self rising flour, or make your own, or use cake flour. Use aluminum free baking powder(If making your own self rising flour) and don't overwork the dough and make sure its cold as well as whatever fat you use(Shortening, Butter, Lard, etc), and you should end up with delicious biscuits.
So tldr is most US flour is bread flour, but you want plain flour for biscuits(scones).
First question that arises. I've never come across an US derived recipe that uses bread flour. Am I using the wrong flour when I make cobbler or 'cookies'(as in the soft bake chocolate chip kind)?
The second. Do you put jam and clotted cream on your bicuits(scones)? And in what order?
First: most common baking recipes use all-purpose flour, which is around 10% protein. This type of flour is widely available and is best for most cookies, quick breads, some types of cake, pancakes, waffles, etc. It's also acceptable for enriched bread doughs (because gluten development is going to be inhibited anyway) and for fatty/laminated doughs like typical pie crust or puff pastry (for basically the same reason).
Bread flour is 14-16%. It will be explicitly called for if necessary. It's more of a specialty product, but it's often available in grocery stores. You'll mostly find it in more 'artisan' bread recipes, especially lean European-style breads like baguettes, ciabatta, etc. Works fine for enriched bread as well -- probably better, but not so much that I'd run out and buy it if I was out if I had AP flour on hand. Useless/counterproductive in basically everything but bread.
Cake flour is a low-protein (8% or less) flour that is more finely milled and is usually bleached. It's suitable for cakes and for biscuits of the Southern variety.
Finally, self-rising flour is usually an all-purpose flour that has baking powder (chemical leavening) mixed in. This makes it more convenient to use for a lot of common American baked goods -- pancakes, waffles, and biscuits, in particular. But it also is unnecessary/harmful if you're using a recipe that doesn't call for baking powder. ('Pancake mix' is similar, but it also contains baking soda and sugar. Just add milk and eggs.)
That was long, sorry. Regarding your second question: jam is a common topping for biscuits, but clotted cream is not a commonplace food in the US. (More's the pity.) One would usually butter a biscuit before adding jam. Or honey, if you're me. Or sausage gravy.
Ah ok. The article read as if high protein (bread) flour was the default in the US.
Checking my plain and sr flour, protein content is 9% and 8.9% so seemingly a bit closer to your cake flour. Sponge flour is a thing here but I think its just finely ground, and not very common.
So that would suggest a 20%/80% mix of bread and plain flour would get closer to your AP flour.
I assume all this is because the American climate is better for producing high protein wheat? I know the Chorleywood method was developed to make bread with low protein flour, because that is what was commonly produced in the UK. Bread flour was imported from Canada, and so was in short supply post war.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chorleywood_bread_process
It's more that there are specific brands of low-protein flour intended for biscuit-making that are commonly available in the South and less available elsewhere. And, just for clarification, it's important to remember that when Americans refer to 'the South' or 'Southern' culture, they're referring to the southeastern states, east of the Rockies, and sometimes even to a narrower subset of these states. (For instance, biscuits are not a staple in Texas or Oklahoma.) Regional naming is often contentious in the US -- just ask which states are part of the Midwest and you might start an argument:
I moved to Germany ten years ago. One of the nice things in this country is that they have a numbering system for classifying flour and they have lots of different varieties that are available in most supermarkets. A few years ago I got into making pizza's from scratch and sort of did a deep dive into what these numbers mean and in the process figured out what to look for in flour.
In the case of a pizza you want finely milled white flour with lots of protein. That means in the numbering system the Germans have you don't want to go too high. The numbers refer to dry ashes (mostly minerals) that remain after burning a certain amount of flour. Dark breads tend to have higher numbers. The darker the higher. Germans really love their dark breads. Forget about making pizza with whole wheat flour or rye based flours.
So, for pizza you want to go low. But you should not go too low either because that means you have cake flour which has less protein. You need protein to form gluten and you need gluten to get a nice stretchy dough. Crumbly pizzas are not a thing.
So, that narrowed it down substantially. German supermarkets generally carry at least 3 different types of white flower: two regular flours with 405 and 550. And a spelt flower with the number 630. The 550 and 630 flours look very similar and they have similar protein content. The 405 has a lower content and is not really great for bread. I mostly use the 630 but have also used the 550. Technically the latter is probably closer to what an Italian would consider acceptable.
What is sold in the US as all purpose flour is highly processed stuff (bleaching is a thing) that has medium protein content and is relatively low in nutritional value. The problem is with the "all purpose" part. That means it must have some protein, otherwise it would be useless for things that require that. Probably it is not super high either otherwise it would be useless for making cakes or indeed biscuits. It's a compromise in other words. Optimized for people that are mostly clueless about this stuff trying to make things like pancakes, muffins, waffels, and other staples of US cuisine.
Flour is a natural product, that means the "Fallzahl" (A gluten test, where a rod is sinking into a dough over a given time) is differing by the harvest.
So what happens to get a industrial standardized product every year, even when it was a bad year (to wet at harvest e.g) is that flours from different locations are blended together - and additives like ascorbin accid (aspirin) is added.
Its just, that though the mineralic quantities might be the same- the content still might be different, as in slightly changing by the harvest and mill date.
I don't think this numbering system is specific to Germany, it is also used in Poland so it must be European thing.
What's more even in smaller stores you can get at least two varieties.
Edit: the systems seem to differ modulo specific numbers, but principle is the same
106 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 168 ms ] threadbiscuit cake flour
Seems plausible.
TLDR: you must use a soft wheat flour such as White Lily, Martha White, or Southern Biscuit. Here's a URL where they make/show biscuits made with all 3 brands:
https://www.wired.com/2012/05/best-biscuit-flour/
TLDRSQUARED: Order of best taste: Southern Biscuit flour, Martha White flour, and White Lily flour (last).
What's arbitrary about it?
Judgment of food ingredients should be based upon taste, flavor, texture and appearance of the results rather than upon the number of Google results, say. Now _that_ would be "arbitrary".
Cake / 'biscuits' (my idea of a biscuit is a solid thing to dip in tea, how British of me, but anyway) flour: about 8-9g of protein per 100 grams of flour.
All-purpose flour: 11-12 grams of protein per 100 grams of flour.
Bread flour: 13-14 grams of protein per 100 grams of flour.
'Pastas' vary a lot. Italian-style uses high-protein durum wheat, which is about 14g/100g. On the opposite end, Chinese jiaozi (steamed/boiled dumplings) use low-protein content (8-9g/100g) to give a very smooth texture.
I'm curious if flour in the US is sold with such nutritional labeling: protein, carbohydrate, fat, salt, etc, measurements per standardised measure (in the EU and much of the world, this is per 100g)?
Maybe flour producers ought to have to label protein content on the label (even in small text), so that it's easier to find the right flour for recipes.
Most products also show this on the nutritional label.
- White Lily flour - 9% protein.
- Hard wheat flour - 12% protein
- Cake flour - 6% protein
An equal mixture of cake flour and hard wheat flour is apparently good for biscuits.
Wal-Mart sells the stuff for $0.51/lb, but they're out of stock right now.
[1] https://www.southernkitchen.com/articles/eat/why-southerners...
http://pinchmysalt.com/how-to-make-the-best-buttermilk-biscu...
Self rising flour is sold premixed with some baking powder, but I tend to add an extra half teaspoon of baking powder per cup of self rising flour when I make biscuits or pancakes with it.
All purpose flour doesn't include any baking powder or baking soda.
https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/220943/chef-johns-buttermi...
It's fairly close to the old school southern recipe, although lard was traditionally used in addition to butter and many recipes added a teaspoon of sugar and a quarter teaspoon of baking soda.
You can add a couple of teaspoons of bacon grease with your buttermilk to get closer to the traditional recipe.
I'm somewhat surprised: in my grocery store, there are "cake flour", "bread flour", and "all purpose flour" in the flour section. It only took a brief search to learn the difference (and which had higher or lower protein counts).
Further research (actually book: "On Cooking"), describes the uses of each flour. In effect: high-protein causes gluten formation, which is necessary for a proper "doughy" bread like Baguette, but is counter-productive for southern-style biscuits.
I suspect the real difference is in the customers. I've heard people arguing over which bagels or donuts are superior, but I've never heard such a conversation for baguettes.
Lots of dough conditioners are also common, which helps make them soft. Often too soft, in fact, so they overcook them.
https://www.buzzfeed.com/lukebailey/scones-and-jizz
It's important to note that when pronouncing the letter H itself it does not begin with an H. Pronouncing it like "haitch" will make you sound uneducated in Britain.
Do you mean if the herbs and bleu cheese were more like the French? Or food in the US in general, in which case I couldn't help but disagree?
From the votes it looks like I misjudged my audience--people actually are huffy that dialects exist. Who knew?
And... well, shall we go on?
The word road comes from the word ride which is still used today to refer to bridleways in Britain (for example, in Hyde Park: the North Ride and the South Ride). Road is therefore a much more general word and is used to refer to many more things than carriageways like railway lines, tunnels and even areas of water near shores.
As for the other stuff, it's true that British and American have both diverged from a common root. The best example is with -ise or -ize endings. Neither is completely correct because some words originally had one and some had the other. The Oxford English Dictionary reflects the original endings in its spellings. But at some point Britain standardised on one and America standardised on the other. Maybe -ise looks nicer but -ize looks cooler? Who knows...
Re weights an measures. We changed it so we wouldn't be doing something different to the rest of entire world.
Puddings are good, why not make everything a pudding? More seriously a pudding used to be a meat based thing (Yorkshire pudding had dripping in) that went sweet. Kind of like why mince pies don't have mince in them.
With the jumper, I assume you would like us to call it a 'sweater'? If its making you sweat, take it off!
I don't know what you're talking about with my r pronunciation. I pronounce my arghs perfectly. I assume you probably pronounce them weirdly though.
America and Britain. Two nations divided by a common language. Winston Churchill.
I think a part of it is that imperial units are human sized and quite useful. A pint of beer is the natural correct unit of measurement. A cm is just a bit too small for a guessed at measure, an inch or foot can be understood to be inaccurate generalisations. Metric equivalents not so much. Road signage is a mess though. Distance: Miles, except shorter distances: Metres. Both shortened to 'm'.
I think you're labouring under parochialism of measurement. Grow up under a different system and you'll see there's nothing special or advantageous about the imperial system at all.
I would guess its the origin of the units, I just find it easier to guestimate a foot rather than a metre.
I will note that — unlike in Europe where metrication and SI units have been legal requirements since 1973 and are in wide use outside of the scientific community — America has no agreed upon “system of weights and measures” as you put it, instead considering the adoption of any standard “voluntary”, which makes a farce of the very idea of standardi[s|z]ation[1].
https://gizmodo.com/the-white-house-says-you-can-use-the-met...
And... we still use a mix of systems, including in "official" things like road signage. In much the same way, Brits still order beer by the pint, read their speedometers in miles per hour, etc. etc.
Such biscuits are still popular with Afrikaaners in South Africa.
Cook and cake have the same origin. Cookie just means "little cake" and therefore is completely correct in the way Americans use it. It just has a different origin to biscuit.
"Rusks", if anyone is curious. You dunk them into your tea or coffee to soften them before eating.
Kendal mint cake is for Lake district walks, so you don't need a biscuit.
You do raise a good point about graduation though. I assume it would have to be non crumbly so you don't lose the deposit on your gown, and be able to soak up lots of alcohol.
English/Scottish/Irish breakfast and afternoon, innumerable single source and black tea blends, and then there's the mass market blends. PG is the number one selling UK mass market tea but was originally sold as "Digestive tea", then "Pre-Gestee", which was abbreviated by stores to PG, which stuck.
Teabags, of course, are the spawn of satan and should be avoided whenever possible. :)
Source: I'm a parent of young kids, and know dozens of others as a result; I don't know a single person that gave their kid a rusk.
Also in Greece:
https://culinarybackstreets.com/cities-category/athens/2018/...
But even in the south, we put normal, brown gravy on, e.g., turkey. Country gravy is different and goes well with different things, like chicken-fried steak. (And now I leave you to Google what that is. ;) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_fried_steak )
And don't get me started on the places that serve abnormally shaped, completely unseasoned, deep-fried tater-tots as "hash browns". Ugh.
In the subcontinent gravy refers to any curry sauce, so there is at least one other well-established usage that differs from the British usage.
For me, Southern American cuisine is very distinctive and unique so I give it free reign on whatever it wants to call things. I object only to some of the silly American names like "French fries" and "Russian dressing".
I hope I just had a bad rendition, but it has put me off for life.
First question that arises. I've never come across an US derived recipe that uses bread flour. Am I using the wrong flour when I make cobbler or 'cookies'(as in the soft bake chocolate chip kind)?
The second. Do you put jam and clotted cream on your bicuits(scones)? And in what order?
Bread flour is 14-16%. It will be explicitly called for if necessary. It's more of a specialty product, but it's often available in grocery stores. You'll mostly find it in more 'artisan' bread recipes, especially lean European-style breads like baguettes, ciabatta, etc. Works fine for enriched bread as well -- probably better, but not so much that I'd run out and buy it if I was out if I had AP flour on hand. Useless/counterproductive in basically everything but bread.
Cake flour is a low-protein (8% or less) flour that is more finely milled and is usually bleached. It's suitable for cakes and for biscuits of the Southern variety.
Finally, self-rising flour is usually an all-purpose flour that has baking powder (chemical leavening) mixed in. This makes it more convenient to use for a lot of common American baked goods -- pancakes, waffles, and biscuits, in particular. But it also is unnecessary/harmful if you're using a recipe that doesn't call for baking powder. ('Pancake mix' is similar, but it also contains baking soda and sugar. Just add milk and eggs.)
That was long, sorry. Regarding your second question: jam is a common topping for biscuits, but clotted cream is not a commonplace food in the US. (More's the pity.) One would usually butter a biscuit before adding jam. Or honey, if you're me. Or sausage gravy.
Checking my plain and sr flour, protein content is 9% and 8.9% so seemingly a bit closer to your cake flour. Sponge flour is a thing here but I think its just finely ground, and not very common.
So that would suggest a 20%/80% mix of bread and plain flour would get closer to your AP flour.
I assume all this is because the American climate is better for producing high protein wheat? I know the Chorleywood method was developed to make bread with low protein flour, because that is what was commonly produced in the UK. Bread flour was imported from Canada, and so was in short supply post war. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chorleywood_bread_process
https://www.vox.com/2016/2/16/10889440/midwest-analysis
Thanks for the info on the Chorleywood process, by the way. I'd never heard of it.
I might make a submission of the chorleywood process at the weekend then. (its basically sliced bread btw )
In the case of a pizza you want finely milled white flour with lots of protein. That means in the numbering system the Germans have you don't want to go too high. The numbers refer to dry ashes (mostly minerals) that remain after burning a certain amount of flour. Dark breads tend to have higher numbers. The darker the higher. Germans really love their dark breads. Forget about making pizza with whole wheat flour or rye based flours.
So, for pizza you want to go low. But you should not go too low either because that means you have cake flour which has less protein. You need protein to form gluten and you need gluten to get a nice stretchy dough. Crumbly pizzas are not a thing.
So, that narrowed it down substantially. German supermarkets generally carry at least 3 different types of white flower: two regular flours with 405 and 550. And a spelt flower with the number 630. The 550 and 630 flours look very similar and they have similar protein content. The 405 has a lower content and is not really great for bread. I mostly use the 630 but have also used the 550. Technically the latter is probably closer to what an Italian would consider acceptable.
What is sold in the US as all purpose flour is highly processed stuff (bleaching is a thing) that has medium protein content and is relatively low in nutritional value. The problem is with the "all purpose" part. That means it must have some protein, otherwise it would be useless for things that require that. Probably it is not super high either otherwise it would be useless for making cakes or indeed biscuits. It's a compromise in other words. Optimized for people that are mostly clueless about this stuff trying to make things like pancakes, muffins, waffels, and other staples of US cuisine.
So what happens to get a industrial standardized product every year, even when it was a bad year (to wet at harvest e.g) is that flours from different locations are blended together - and additives like ascorbin accid (aspirin) is added.
Its just, that though the mineralic quantities might be the same- the content still might be different, as in slightly changing by the harvest and mill date.
It's actually a thing. You should try making one.
Edit: the systems seem to differ modulo specific numbers, but principle is the same
Your German-ness is showing in this misspelling here.
https://onlinestore.smucker.com/display_category.cfm?cat_id=...