Beaten Biscuits

An excited fourteen year old cornered me after church Sunday, "When are we making beaten biscuits? I want to help. I can come on Thursday, please!" I was a little surprised but since making beaten biscuits is a two person job I sure wasn't turning down the help. In the past he had been coerced into helping, so he knew what he was getting into. Thursday was the first day of Christmas vacation for him, but it wasn't the day I needed to be baking, so I decided to collect him after school on Wednesday.

Beaten biscuits, for the uninitiated, are a form of biscuit created by putting the dough through a device that looks a lot like an old wringer on a wringer washer. The dough is folded and squeezed through the rollers, folded and squeezed until it becomes satiny and very elastic. The resulting biscuits are a smooth, firm circle with the consistency of a 1/2 inch thick cracker. Southerners think it is Divine, especially with country ham. In our house it's a Christmas tradition. It's a labor of love and togetherness. Especially since it takes one person to turn the crank and another to feed the dough through the rollers. I can't imagine why people made them before the invention of the cranked rollers. Before rollers they were made by beating the dough until it was elastic. Usually the implement was a hatchet. The dough was given a hundred whacks with the flat side of the hatchet. Believe me, women were really determined to have beaten biscuits back then. Just shows what a southerner will do for good food.

Now, knowing that my fourteen year old grandson doesn't hold aspirations of becoming a chef, I suspected there were some ulterior motives for his enthusiastic offer of help. As I pulled out of the garage to go pick him up for our afternoon of cooking I saw his dad's truck at the barn and realized the first reason for his help. His dad is stripping tobacco, a boring, never-ending job, that grandson gets drafted into every free moment. Since helping with beaten biscuits trumps just about anything, he has become my assistant chef. Smiling to myself, that for once I get to be top dog over farm chores, I continued to town.

Soon we were home and I was elbow deep in dough. I looked around for grandson and found no one. It seems that he had decided he had a few minutes to play a video game. Finally I corralled him and got him ready to crank the machine. I start feeding the dough through and he starts cranking... fast! "Slow down!" I caution, "You're going to catch my fingers." With that the dough starts to wrap around the roller. I frantically scrape if off and gather it into a ball for the next try. Once again we start and off he goes to the races. After several passes of the dough through the rollers he is still cranking at a furious speed. "Is it about done?" He queries. "What's the rush? We've got all afternoon." "Sure" he responds, "but I've killed a bunch a men and I have to get back to finish." So much for love of grandmother, it seems it's my computer he's in love with!

On the positive side. We finished the biscuits in record time and I still have all my fingers.