Butter Roll
Formula Flour, 35 lbs.
Milk, 10 qts.
Sugar, 2 lbs.
Salt, 10 ozs.
Butter, salt free, 1 lb.
Lard, 1 lb., 2 ozs.
Yeast, 1 lb.
Method Dissolve the yeast in about 1 qt. of milk and place to one side. Put the balance of milk, sugar and salt in a bowl and stir to dissolve the dry ingredients. Now add the flour and begin mixing. When partly mixed add the yeast. After the yeast has been incorporated add the shortening, and continue mixing until the dough is smooth and elastic. Fermentation For a 4½ hour fermentation period allow the dough to rise 2½ hours first rising, second rising, 1/4 hours; third rising, ½ hour. Allow it to rest 15 minutes, when it will be ready to be divided. -
This is a trade formula written for a bakeshop mixer, not a home bowl: 35 lb of flour yields something like 57 lb of dough. Everything below assumes you want to scale it down and fill in the details a professional baker of the day would not have needed spelled out.
- Scaling to a home batchDivide every weight by 35 to work from 1 lb of flour, or by about 32 for roughly 500 g. At 500 g flour that is roughly 305 g milk, 29 g sugar, 9 g salt, 14 g unsalted butter, 16 g lard and 14 g fresh yeast. Weigh rather than measure; the formula is built on ratios.
- The milk measureTen quarts of milk to 35 lb of flour is about 61 percent hydration by weight (a quart of milk weighs about 2.15 lb). That is a firm, machinable roll dough, stiffer than most modern enriched doughs, and it should feel that way in the hand.
- The second rising timeThe fermentation schedule was checked against the printed page and now reads as our text gives it: a 4½-hour period with 2½ hours for the first rising, ½ hour for the third, and a 15-minute rest before dividing. The second rising is printed as "1/4 hours," which leaves the stages short of the stated total; 1¼ hours is the reading that fits.
- YeastOne pound to 35 lb flour is compressed (fresh) cake yeast at about 2.9 percent, unremarkable for a dough of this kind. Substitute roughly 40 percent of that weight in active dry, or about a third in instant, and add instant yeast with the flour rather than slurrying it in milk.
- Salt-free butterSpecified so the baker controls the salt himself; the 10 oz of salt in the formula is the whole seasoning. Modern unsalted butter is the direct equivalent. If you use salted butter, drop the added salt slightly.
- LardThe lard is here for tenderness and shortening power at a lower cost than butter. Rendered leaf lard behaves closest to the original; an equal weight of butter works but gives a softer, more cakey crumb.
- The punches matter more than the clockThe three risings are knock-backs on a stiff, heavily yeasted dough. Judge by the dough — it should be well domed and just beginning to slacken before each punch — and shorten the stages if your kitchen is warm.
- Baking, which the formula omitsThe formula stops at the divider, leaving the oven to the shop. For a modern bake, rolls of about 2 oz, proofed until light, will take 400-425F for 12 to 15 minutes. The full formula makes about 62 lb of dough, on the order of 500 rolls; scale accordingly.
Trade journals and formula books existed to supply working bakeshops with formulas in barrel-and-sack quantities, and the shorthand shows: no oven temperature, no bake time, no yield. What the formula does specify is the fat -- a pound of unsalted butter alongside a slightly larger weight of lard -- which is the whole argument of a "butter roll" in a commercial context. Butter was the selling point on the counter card; lard was the cheaper shortening that did much of the tenderising work behind it, and salt-free butter let the baker set the seasoning himself rather than inherit whatever the creamery had salted to. The multi-stage fermentation, with two knock-backs before a short rest and divide, is ordinary straight-dough practice of the period.