Thursday, February 12, 2009

Twice Cooked !

Baking and Eating Biscuits is not all the same today


A sweet or savoury dry flat cake with a high caloric content (420 - 510 cal per 100g).

As their name implies (it comes from the French Bis = twice + cuit = cooked), biscuits should in theory be cooked twice. However, this is no longer practised, altough the Reims biscuit was originally a flat cake that was put back in oven after being removed from its tin. This made it drier and harder but improved its keeping qualities. This very hard, barely risen biscuit was for centuries the staple food of soldiers and sailors. Roman legions were familier with it and many claimed that it would keep for centuries. Soldiers' biscuits or army biscuits were known under Louis XIV as 'Stone Bread" (pain de pierre). In 1984, army biscuits were replaced by war bread made of strach, sugar, water, nitrogenous matter, ash, and cellulose, but the name 'army biscuit' stuck, even when the method of manufacture changed. It did not disappear until soldiers were supplied with proper bread, even on campaigns.
' Animalized' biscuits were also made. These were flat cakes containing meat juices and thought to be very nourishing. Vitamin biscuits appeared during World War II and these were distributed in schools in France. Nowadays, some special diet products are presented as vitamin enriched biscuits with diffrent flavours.


But what we get today is just amazing and endless varieties, do not go in for the same kind , every time you go try something diffrent, never predict the taste train you taste buds to all the varieties, this world of biscuits offers you

HAPPYCOOKIES!

1 comment:

ranji said...

dear chef chintu,
im proud tat i was ur student...
young enough to appericate n bless u but still words come running 4m my heart.....itz fantabulous...in short ur "LIVING LEGEND"
"DRINK N LET EVERYBODY DRINK"
REG,
RANjith