Biscuit
A biscuit is a flour-based baked food item. Biscuits are typically hard, flat, and unleavened. They are usually sweet and may be made with sugar, chocolate, icing, jam, ginger, or cinnamon. Savoury biscuits are called crackers.
Types of biscuit include biscotti, sandwich biscuits, digestive biscuits, ginger biscuits, shortbread biscuits, chocolate chip cookies, Anzac biscuits, and speculaas.
The term "biscuit" is used in many English-speaking countries. In the United States and parts of Canada, sweet biscuits are nearly always called "cookies" and savoury biscuits are called "crackers".
Name
Small, hard, flour-based baked products are known in many English speaking countries as biscuits. In the United States and sometimes Canada, this word refers to a quick bread that is like a scone, but with a fluffier texture, and what are known in many English speaking countries are called either a cookie or cracker. Canadians sometimes distinguish the quick bread with the name "tea biscuit". In the United Kingdom, the Isle of Man and Ireland, cookie refers to a single type of biscuit: the sweeter baked dough typically containing chocolate chips or raisins. In Scotland, cookie is also used to refer to some specific types of biscuits or breads. Historically in the United Kingdom, quick breads were known as biscuits. This practice has ended in England, although it has remained in Scotland and Guernsey.The word biscuit comes from the Old French word bescuit, which was derived from the Latin words bis and coquere, coctus, and, hence, means 'twice-cooked'. This is because biscuits were originally cooked in a twofold process: first baked, and then dried out in a slow oven.History
Biscuits for travel
The need for nutritious, easy-to-store, easy-to-carry, and long-lasting foods on long journeys, in particular at sea, was initially solved by taking livestock along with a butcher/cook. However, this took up additional space on what were either horse-powered treks or small ships, reducing the time of travel before additional food was required. This resulted in early armies' adopting the style of hunter-foraging.The introduction of the baking of processed cereals, including the creation of flour, provided a more reliable source of food. Egyptian sailors carried a flat, brittle loaf of millet bread called dhourra cake while the Romans had a biscuit called buccellum. Roman cookbook Apicius describes: "a thick paste of fine wheat flour was boiled and spread out on a plate. When it had dried and hardened, it was cut up and then fried until crisp, then served with honey and pepper."
Many early physicians believed that most medicinal problems were associated with digestion. Hence, for both sustenance and avoidance of illness, a daily consumption of a biscuit was considered good for health.
Hard biscuits soften as they age. To solve this problem, early bakers attempted to create the hardest biscuit possible. Because it is so hard and dry, if properly stored and transported, navies' hardtack will survive rough handling and high temperature. Baked hard, it can be kept without spoiling for years as long as it is kept dry. For long voyages, hardtack was baked four times, rather than the more common two. To soften hardtack for eating, it was often dunked in brine, coffee, or some other liquid or cooked into a skillet meal.
The collection Sayings of the Desert Fathers mentions that Anthony the Great ate biscuits and the text implies that it was a popular food among monks of the time and region.
At the time of the Spanish Armada in 1588, the daily allowance on board a Royal Navy ship was one pound of biscuit plus one gallon of beer. Samuel Pepys in 1667 first regularised naval victualling with varied and nutritious rations. Royal Navy hardtack during Queen Victoria's reign was made by machine at the Royal Clarence Victualling Yard at Gosport, Hampshire, stamped with the Queen's mark and the number of the oven in which they were baked. When machinery was introduced into the process the dough was thoroughly mixed and rolled into sheets about long and wide which were stamped in one stroke into about sixty hexagonal-shaped biscuits. This left the sheets sufficiently coherent to be placed in the oven in one piece and when baked they were easy to separate. The hexagonal shape rather than traditional circular biscuits meant a saving in material and was easier to pack. Biscuits remained an important part of the Royal Navy sailor's diet until the introduction of canned foods. Canned meat was first marketed in 1814; preserved beef in tins was officially added to Royal Navy rations in 1847.
Confectionery biscuits
Early biscuits were hard, dry, and unsweetened. They were most often cooked after bread, in a cooling bakers' oven; they were a cheap form of sustenance for the poor.By the 7th century AD, cooks of the Sassanian Empire had learnt from their forebears the techniques of lightening and enriching bread-based mixtures with eggs, butter, and cream, and sweetening them with fruit and honey. One of the earliest spiced biscuits was gingerbread, in French, pain d'épices, meaning "spice bread", brought to Europe in 992 by the Armenian monk Grégoire de Nicopolis. He left Nicopolis Pompeii, of Lesser Armenia to live in Bondaroy, France, near the town of Pithiviers. He stayed there for seven years and taught French priests and Christians how to cook gingerbread. This was originally a dense, treaclely spice cake or bread. As it was so expensive to make, early ginger biscuits were a cheap form of using up the leftover bread mix.
File:Huntley & Palmers Biscuits tin, pic3.JPG|thumb|left|Huntley & Palmers biscuit tin. Formed in Reading, Berkshire, in 1822, the biscuit company became one of the world's first global brands.
With the combination of knowledge spreading from Al-Andalus, and then the Crusades and subsequent spread of the spice trade to Europe, the cooking techniques and ingredients of Arabia spread into Northern Europe. By mediaeval times, biscuits were made from a sweetened, spiced paste of breadcrumbs and then baked, or from cooked bread enriched with sugar and spices and then baked again. King Richard I of England left for the Third Crusade with "biskit of muslin", which was a mixed corn compound of barley, rye, and bean flour.
As the making and quality of bread had been controlled to this point, so were the skills of biscuit-making through the craft guilds. As the supply of sugar began, and the refinement and supply of flour increased, so did the ability to sample more leisurely foodstuffs, including sweet biscuits. Early references from the Vadstena monastery show how the Swedish nuns were baking gingerbread to ease digestion in 1444. The first documented trade of gingerbread biscuits dates to the 16th century, where they were sold in monastery pharmacies and town square farmers markets. Gingerbread became widely available in the 18th century. The Industrial Revolution in Britain sparked the formation of businesses in various industries, and the British biscuit firms of McVitie's, Carr's, Huntley & Palmers, and Crawfords were all established by 1850.
British biscuit companies vied to dominate the market with new products and eye-catching packaging. The decorative biscuit tin, invented by Huntley & Palmers in 1831, saw British biscuits exported around the world. In 1900 Huntley & Palmers biscuits were sold in 172 countries, and their global reach was reflected in their advertising. Competition and innovation among British firms saw 49 patent applications for biscuit-making equipment, tins, dough-cutting machines and ornamental moulds between 1897 and 1900. In 1891, Cadbury filed a patent for a chocolate-coated biscuit. Along with local farm produce of meat and cheese, many regions of the world have their own distinct style of biscuit due to the historic prominence of this form of food. The Scots, for example, created shortbread, and in 1898 the Scottish manufacturer Walker's Shortbread was founded.
Introduction in South Asia
Biscuits and loaves were introduced in Bengal during the British colonial period and became popular within the Sylheti Muslim community. However, the middle-class Hindus of Cachar and Sylhet were very suspicious of biscuits and breads as they believed they were baked by Muslims. On one occasion, a few Hindus in Cachar caught an Englishman eating biscuits with tea, which caused an uproar. The information reached the Hindus of Sylhet and a small rebellion occurred. In response to this, companies started to advertise their bread as "machine-made" and "untouched by hand" to tell Hindus that the breads were "safe for consumption". This incident is mentioned in Bipin Chandra Pal's autobiography and he mentions how culinary habits of Hindus gradually changed and biscuits and loaves eventually became increasingly popular.Types
Biscuits can be divided into four categories, separated by their process and ingredients:Crackers
Crackers are savoury biscuits with a "crispy, open texture". They include biscuits such as cream crackers, "Ritz-type" crackers, saltines, snack crackers and water biscuits. Cracker doughs often have some of the following features: they are leavened, have a water content between 15–25%, are laminated and rise during the first part of baking.In a general process to make crackers, dough is mixed and fermented. It is fed through a dough feed conveyer to be laminated, sheeted and cut. It is baked, sprayed with oil and cooled, before finally being packed. Baking surfaces differ by the country biscuits are baked in: traditional British biscuits being baked on light wire mesh, while American biscuits are baked on heavy mesh. The baking process requires high amounts of energy to get the relatively high hydration doughs to a final biscuit that is 1.5–2.5% water.