[mauvehaus]

It's interesting that the motion is called that, because any biscuits I've ever made get tough and not flaky if you knead them too much. And too much is pretty much anything more than the bare minimum required to get them to hold together.

Biscuits (in the US sense) are more like a chemically leavened pie crust than a yeast leavened bread.

If it's not obvious, I'm not a serious baker.

[strkitten]

I like the term “making biscuits” better than “kneading” or “kneading biscuits”. Butter biscuits (and scones) usually require handwork to integrate the butter into the dry ingredients. In my experience, this handwork pretty closely resembles what the cats are doing. There’s a lot of squeezing going on to break up the cold butter and mix it in.

[mauvehaus]

I think of it more as a pinching motion to divide the big clumps of fat into smaller ones while coating them in flour. I'm still not convinced that cats know how to make biscuits :-)

[dendrite9]

There was a old type of biscuit in Maryland that was not leavened with chemicals but aerated by beating. Kneading would make them too tough of course. I don't understand the technique exactly and someday I'd like to try making a batch, although it would be better to find a place I can try a real one first if that still exists.

https://atasteofhistorywithjoycewhite.blogspot.com/2015/03/m...

https://libapps.salisbury.edu/nabb-online/exhibits/show/baki...

[Gordonjcp]

It was only a few years ago that I discovered that "biscuits" in the US sense are scones.

So that made "biscuits and gravy" sound a lot more appealing.

[buildsjets]

Any scone I've ever eaten (around the world) was sweetened to some degree. American southern style biscuits are unsweetened and have a higher fat content than a scone. It's really hard to find decent ones outside of their natural range, even throughout a lot of the USA. I would never order them in say, Seattle.

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2018/11/better-bi...

Next topic, cheesy shrimp and grits? Or is is higher class to call it Polenta Svelta con Gamberetti?

https://www.antonio-carluccio.com/polenta_svelta_con_gambere...

[dendrite9]

As a counterpoint there's this article about the technique, not the flour, being the critical ingredient. I remember both because I dated someone from the south who missed the biscuits and I was trying to make better ones. The link you have made me think I needed to work on the flour. Then this made me think improving the technique was more important, but by that point I had gotten better at it. Now I'd have to restart the practice to make something I'm proud of. Most of the biscuits I make now get frozen and then shared for breakfast while camping or even backpacking.

None of that is to say I'm an expert, seeing that article just reminded me of a lot of biscuit making.

https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/01/19/686579106/is...

[Gordonjcp]

Sweet scones? I mean yeah, I guess you could, but why?

[amacneil]

Biscuits in the American sense are scones in the Commonwealth sense.

Scones in the US sense are sweet. Scones in the rest of the world are savory, more like American biscuits.

Biscuits in the Commonwealth sense are American cookies, although I feel like American cookies are usually the thick kind with chocolate chips, whereas Commonwealth biscuits are often the plain thin ones that you might dunk in a cup of tea.

Speaking of tea - dinner?

[chaosjevil]

In Italian I've seen a bunch of names for the kneading: pigiare la lana (to tread the wool), fare il pane (to make [knead] bread), and la danza del latte (the milk dance). I think that the first two are references to the movement, just like "making biscuits"; except that bread actually improves as you knead it, unlike biscuits.

As in Portuguese it's just "amassar pãozinho", or roughly "to knead bread", with a [likely affectionate] diminutive.