Early hard biscuits were a simple, storable version of
bread. The word "biscuit" itself originates from the
medieval Latin word '''', meaning "twice-cooked". The modern Italian baked goods known as
biscotti (also meaning "twice-cooked" in
Italian) most closely resemble the Medieval Latin item and cooking technique. Ship's biscuits were first referenced in the 12th century in a journey Richard I took to Cyprus. They were made of barley, rye and bean flour. The British Royal Navy used hard, flour-based biscuits that would keep for long journeys at sea but would also become so difficult to chew that they had to be softened up. These were first introduced in 1588 to the rations of ships and found their way into the New World by the 1700s at the latest. Early British settlers in the United States brought with them a simple, easy style of cooking, most often based on ground wheat and warmed with gravy. In the early 19th century, before the
American Civil War, cooks created biscuits as a cheaply produced addition for their meals that required no yeast, which was expensive and difficult to store. With no leavening agents except the bitter-tasting
pearlash available,
beaten biscuits were laboriously beaten and folded to incorporate air into the dough which expanded when heated in the oven causing the biscuit to rise. In eating, the advantage of the biscuit over a slice of bread was that it was harder, and hence kept its shape when wiping up gravy in the popular combination
biscuits and gravy. Southern chefs may have had an advantage in creating biscuits. Southern American bleached all-purpose flours, originally grown in the
Carolinas,
Georgia and
Tennessee before national food distribution networks, are made from the soft winter wheat that grows in the warm Southern summer. This summer growth results in wheat that has less
protein, which is more suited to the creation of quick breads, as well as cookies,
cakes and
muffins. Northern American all-purpose flours, mainly grown in
Ohio,
Indiana and
Illinois, are made from hard spring wheats that grow in the North's colder climate. In 1875,
Alexander P. Ashbourne patented the first
biscuit cutter in the United States, useful for making cookies, cakes, or baking powder biscuits. It consisted of a board to roll the biscuits out on, which was hinged to a metal plate with various biscuit cutter shapes mounted to it. Pre-shaped ready-to-bake biscuits can be purchased in supermarkets, in the form of small refrigerated cylindrical segments of dough encased in a cardboard can. These refrigerator biscuits were patented by Ballard and Ballard in 1931. in
West Virginia in 1980. Biscuit franchises tend to cluster in the Southern part of the United States where Southern American bleached all-purpose flours were originally used in cooking. ==Preparing==