thumb|A [[custard cream and a bourbon biscuit; types of sweet sandwich biscuits]]
A biscuit<!-- Do not add pronunciation here, per WP:LEAD. --> is a flour-based baked food item. Biscuits are typically hard, flat, and unleavened. They are usually sweet and may be made with sugar, chocolate, icing, jam, ginger, or cinnamon. Savoury biscuits are called crackers or biscuits for cheese.
Types of biscuit include biscotti, sandwich biscuits (such as custard creams), digestive biscuits, ginger biscuits, shortbread biscuits, chocolate chip cookies, Anzac biscuits, and speculaas.
The term "biscuit" is used in many English-speaking countries. In the United States and parts of Canada, sweet biscuits are nearly always called "cookies" and savoury biscuits are called "crackers".
Name
thumb|North American biscuit (left) and British biscuits of the [[bourbon biscuit|bourbon variety (right). The North American biscuit is soft and flaky like a scone, whereas the British biscuits are smaller, drier, sweeter, and crunchy like cookies.]]Small, hard, flour-based baked products are known in many English-speaking countries as biscuits. In the United States and sometimes Canada, this word refers to a quick bread that is like a scone, but with a fluffier texture (see biscuit (bread)), and what are known as biscuits in other English-speaking countries are called either a cookie or a cracker. Canadians sometimes distinguish the quick bread with the name "tea biscuit". In the United Kingdom, the Isle of Man and Ireland, cookie refers to a single type of biscuit: the sweeter baked dough typically containing chocolate chips or raisins. In Scotland, cookie is also used to refer to some specific types of biscuits or breads. Historically in the United Kingdom, quick breads were known as biscuits. This practice has ended in England, although it has remained in Scotland and Guernsey.
The word biscuit comes from the Old French word , which was derived from the Latin words ('twice') and ('to cook', 'cooked'), and, hence, means 'twice-cooked'. This is because biscuits were originally cooked in a twofold process: first baked, and then dried out in a slow oven.
History
Biscuits for travel
thumb|Ship's biscuit from on display in [[Kronborg, Denmark]]
The need for nutritious, easy-to-store, easy-to-carry, and long-lasting foods on long journeys, in particular at sea, was initially solved by taking livestock along with a butcher/cook. However, this took up additional space on what were either horse-powered treks or small ships, reducing the time of travel before additional food was required. This resulted in early armies' adopting the style of hunter-foraging.
The introduction of the baking of processed cereals, including the creation of flour, provided a more reliable source of food. Egyptian sailors carried a flat, brittle loaf of millet bread called dhourra cake while the Romans had a biscuit called buccellum. To soften hardtack for eating, it was often dunked in brine, coffee, or some other liquid or cooked into a skillet meal.
The collection Sayings of the Desert Fathers mentions that Anthony the Great (who lived in the 4th century AD) ate biscuits and the text implies that it was a popular food among monks of the time and region.
At the time of the Spanish Armada in 1588, the daily allowance on board a Royal Navy ship was one pound of biscuit plus one gallon of beer. Samuel Pepys in 1667 first regularised naval victualling with varied and nutritious rations. Royal Navy hardtack during Queen Victoria's reign was made by machine at the Royal Clarence Victualling Yard at Gosport, Hampshire, stamped with the Queen's mark and the number of the oven in which they were baked. When machinery was introduced into the process the dough was thoroughly mixed and rolled into sheets about long and wide which were stamped in one stroke into about sixty hexagonal-shaped biscuits. This left the sheets sufficiently coherent to be placed in the oven in one piece and when baked they were easy to separate. The hexagonal shape rather than traditional circular biscuits meant a saving in material and was easier to pack. Biscuits remained an important part of the Royal Navy sailor's diet until the introduction of canned foods. Canned meat was first marketed in 1814; preserved beef in tins was officially added to Royal Navy rations in 1847.
Confectionery biscuits
thumb|Traditional Polish [[Toruń gingerbread|Toruń gingerbread pierniki toruńskie]]
Early biscuits were hard, dry, and unsweetened. They were most often cooked after bread, in a cooling bakers' oven; they were a cheap form of sustenance for the poor.
By the 7th century AD, cooks of the Sassanian Empire had learnt from their forebears the techniques of lightening and enriching bread-based mixtures with eggs, butter, and cream, and sweetening them with fruit and honey. One of the earliest spiced biscuits was gingerbread, in French, pain d'épices, meaning "spice bread", brought to Europe in 992 by the Armenian monk Grégoire de Nicopolis. He left Nicopolis Pompeii, of Lesser Armenia to live in Bondaroy, France, near the town of Pithiviers. He stayed there for seven years and taught French priests and Christians how to cook gingerbread. This was originally a dense, treaclely (molasses-based) spice cake or bread. As it was so expensive to make, early ginger biscuits were a cheap form of using up the leftover bread mix.
thumb|left|[[Huntley & Palmers biscuit tin. Formed in Reading, Berkshire, in 1822, the biscuit company became one of the world's first global brands.]]
With the combination of knowledge spreading from Al-Andalus, and then the Crusades and subsequent spread of the spice trade to Europe, the cooking techniques and ingredients of Arabia spread into Northern Europe. King Richard I of England (aka Richard the Lionheart) left for the Third Crusade (1189–92) with "biskit of muslin", which was a mixed corn compound of barley, rye, and bean flour. The first documented trade of gingerbread biscuits dates to the 16th century, where they were sold in monastery pharmacies and town square farmers markets. Gingerbread became widely available in the 18th century. The Industrial Revolution in Britain sparked the formation of businesses in various industries, and the British biscuit firms of McVitie's, Carr's, Huntley & Palmers, and Crawfords were all established by 1850.