Biscuits (Fr., 'twice-baked'), small, flat bread, rendered dry and hard by baking, in order to their long preservation. Biscuit-baking is rapidly becoming an industry in itself, and factories are rising up all over the country where biscuits are made in large quantities. In these factories the flour and other ingredients of which biscuits are made is never handled from the time it enters the works until it issues from them as a finished article. In the case of hard biscuits the various ingredients are run into a kneading-machine, where they are thoroughly incorporated into a stiff dough. This is then 'braked'—i.e. passed and repassed between rollers until pressed into long sheets with smooth surfaces. These sheets are then placed on a biscuit-cutting machine, which is provided with a pair of rollers set to compress the dough as it passes between them into the desired thickness. The dough is carried along by a woollen or canvas web, which delivers the dough underneath a block containing cutters which descend and cut the biscuits to the desired shape. As the block rises, the web carries the cut dough onwards, the scrap dough being collected; they next pass on to a wire frame travelling through a heated chamber or oven. The passage through the oven occupies about fifteen minutes, during which time they are completely baked. They are then carried to the packing-room, and when cool at once packed in tins. So rapidly is this operation conducted, that about 2000 lb. weight of biscuits are passed through one of these ovens every day of ten hours.
Biscuits are divided into two classes—the unfermented and the fermented. Unfermented or unleavened bread, generally known as common sea-biscuits or ship-bread, are made of wheat-flour (retaining some of the bran), water, and common salt.
Captains' biscuits are prepared from wheat-flour, water, with common salt, and butter, with an occasional small dose of yeast to cause partial fermentation. Milk is also sometimes employed. Water biscuits are made of flour and water; hard biscuits, of flour and water, with variable quantities of butter, spices, and sugar. Soft biscuits contain increased quantities of butter and sugar. Yeast biscuits are those the dough of which is mixed with a small quantity of yeast, yielding more porous biscuits. Butter biscuits are made with much butter and a little yeast.
In making fancy biscuits great care must be taken in the manipulative part of the process to incorporate the ingredients in a systematic manner. Thus, the butter is mixed with the flour in a dry condition, and then the water or milk added; and when eggs are used, they are thoroughly beaten up with the sugar (if the latter is required), and the egg-paste added to the dough, which has been previously prepared with or without butter. The various kinds of biscuits in the preparation of which yeast is employed, present a more spongy aspect than the unyeasted biscuits. Occasionally a little sesquicarbonate of ammonia (volatile salt) is added, to assist in raising the dough, and make a lighter biscuit. A great objection, however, to fermented biscuits is that they deteriorate very rapidly on keeping.
Soft or spiced biscuits are prepared from flour, with much sugar, a great many eggs, some butter, and a small quantity of spices and essences. The eggs tend to give a nice yellow cream-colour to the biscuits.
The extent to which biscuits are now consumed may be learned from the fact that several of the largest biscuit-manufactories each prepare and throw into market every week from 30,000 to 50,000 lb. weight of biscuits of various kinds.
Of biscuits requiring special methods of manufacture, we may mention 'meat biscuits,' 'digestive biscuits,' 'charcoal biscuits,' and what is known as the 'perfect food biscuit.' The meat biscuit has not met with much favour as an article of food. It consisted of the usual ingredients of hard biscuit made up with a soup containing the soluble matters of beef. One of the objects of the meat biscuit—viz. the preservation of animal food of South America and Australia, has been attained by other preferable methods (see PRESERVED PROVISIONS). A coarse kind of meat biscuit is used for feeding dogs.
Digestive biscuits are prepared in such a manner that they may contain diastase, the nitrogenous transforming matter of malt; but whatever quantity of this substance they may contain in the condition of dough is destroyed in the process of baking.
Charcoal biscuits, originally introduced by Bragg, were once held in great repute as a kind of medicinal food. They contain wood charcoal incorporated in their substance. The wood charcoal usually acts as an absorbent of gases, but it loses this quality when saturated with moisture; and it is in this condition, of course, that it reaches the stomach, any benefit that may accrue therefore from the use of charcoal biscuits cannot be due to its absorbent powers. It may, however, be of some benefit by acting as a mild mechanical irritant.
The perfect food biscuit, invented by S. Henderson & Sons, is one whose composition is based on the proportion of chemical elements needed for a complete and perfect dietary—i.e. it is designed to contain all the food materials, and in the proper proportion, that physiology indicates as required for the nourishment and support of the human body.