Tired after a long day at work, you might decide to make shortcut empanadas using canned biscuit dough. Bleary-eyed, you unwrap the tube, press the seam, and are suddenly surprised by a loud bang. Now you’re wide awake and wondering — why do canned biscuits pop when you open them? As it turns out, the pop is caused by a combination of the spiral cardboard design and half-risen dough which continues to release gas creating a build-up of pressure inside the can.
Lively B. Willoughby, a wholesale baker in Kentucky, was the first to invent canned, ready-to-bake biscuits and earned a patent for his design in 1931. Using a baking powder and Epsom salt-lined cardboard tube, Willoughby was able to successfully sell packaged biscuit dough under the brand “Ye Olde Kentuckie Buttermilk Biscuits.” He later partnered with Ballard Flour in the 1940s, a company that was soon bought out by Pillsbury. In the beginning, the original design excelled at keeping the biscuit dough fresh, but it was rather difficult to open the cardboard tube and extract the individual biscuits while keeping their shape. Through trial and error, Pillsbury eventually settled on the spiral cardboard tube we whack on our countertops today. While startling, this tube pops open in order to prevent the dough inside from being crushed or smashed when removed from the can.
How premade biscuit tubes work
The spiral cardboard can used to package premade biscuit dough was an ingenious design that revolutionized the industry, evidenced by the fact that we still see the same packaging used for premade biscuits, cinnamon rolls, and crescent rolls today nearly 70 years later. However, inventing this method to package an actively rising dough took a lot of trial and error with factors like the timing of packaging, transportation, temperature fluctuations, and ease of use for customers. Because of this, the dough is made with carefully measured ingredients in the right proportions to guarantee consistent texture and rise, then placed into the can which is sealed under just enough pressure so that it makes a satisfying pop but doesn’t explode when you don’t want it to. When you unwrap the label and smack the container against the countertop (or press a spoon to the seam) the gas that was built up inside the can from the rising dough can suddenly escape and the dough quickly expands, creating that signature crack.
Canned dough is a marvelous invention that allows busy people to enjoy delicious, freshly baked biscuits in a snap. You can also even make a few tweaks to ensure that your canned biscuits taste like they were made from scratch. Plus, canned biscuit dough is also incredibly versatile, enabling you to skip making the crust for a chicken pot pie or quickly whip up a batch of sweet and gooey Korean pancakes.
