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Boston Rolls
Two quarts flour, one pint milk, one half cup granulated sugar, one half cup yeast, one half teaspoon soda, butter the size of an egg, scald the milk and when luke warm put in with the other ingredients. Mix in enough flour to make a sponge, let it rise ten or twelve hours; when light knead in the rest of the flour and let it rise again till light; then knead about ten minutes, roll out one half inch thick, cut in circles the size of a small tea saucer, spread with butter, double the buttered surfaces together and let them rise a few hours. This is not much work but very delicious.
A folded, buttered dinner-style roll built on an overnight sponge. The original assumes a jar of liquid homemade yeast and gives no oven instruction at all, so those are the two gaps to close.
- The half cup of yeastThis means liquid yeast or barm, not granules. Substitute about 2 1/4 teaspoons instant or active dry yeast and add roughly 1/4 cup more milk or water to make up the lost liquid.
- Flour and butter by volumeTwo quarts of flour is 8 cups, around 2 to 2 1/4 lb. Butter the size of an egg is about 2 oz, or 4 tablespoons.
- The sodaThe half teaspoon of soda is there to neutralise the sourness of a long-fermented homemade sponge. With commercial yeast there is little acid for it to react with, so it can simply be left out.
- Rising timesTen to twelve hours suited a sluggish barm. With modern yeast, mix the sponge at night and expect it bubbly and domed in 8 hours at cool room temperature, or refrigerate it. The shaped rolls need 45 minutes to an hour, not "a few hours."
- Scalding the milkOnce done as a matter of course with raw milk. Pasteurised milk needs only warming to about 110F, and it should not go into the yeast much hotter than that.
- The foldCut circles about 4 to 4 1/2 inches across, the width of a small tea saucer, brush generously with soft butter, then crease slightly off-centre and fold so the top edge overhangs. The butter layer is what lets the roll open cleanly at the seam.
- Baking, which the recipe omits400F for 12 to 15 minutes, until the tops are deep gold and the seams pale. Brush with more melted butter as they come out.
- YieldAround 18 to 24 rolls from the full quantity. The dough halves without trouble.
The folded, butter-creased roll is the signature of Boston's Parker House hotel, which opened in 1855, and the shape is still sold under that name; the story that a cook there invented it by tossing unfinished dough into the oven in a temper is traditional rather than documented. The form is often said to have escaped the hotel and circulated in community and church cookbooks under names such as "Boston rolls" or "pocketbook rolls." The long overnight sponge and the half cup of liquid yeast place this version squarely in the era before packaged yeast was reliable, when a cook kept her own leaven going and planned bread a day ahead.