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Every-Day Rolls
Take a piece of bread dough on baking day, when molded out the last time, about enough for a small loaf, spread out a little, addi one egg, two table-spoons of sugar, and three-fourths cup of lard; add a little flour and a small tea-spoon soda if the least bit sour; mix well, let rise, mold into rolls or biscuits, set to rise again, and they will be ready for the oven in twenty or thirty minutes.
This is a scrap-dough recipe: an ordinary lean bread dough is enriched with egg, sugar and fat on baking day and turned into soft rolls. The original assumes you already have dough proofing on the counter, and it never names an oven temperature.
- How much dough"Enough for a small loaf" is roughly 1 to 1 1/4 lb of risen bread dough, about the amount you would bake in a 8x4-inch pan. That will absorb the enrichments below and give a dozen rolls.
- Three-fourths cup of lardThat is a great deal of fat for a pound of dough and produces something closer to a soft dinner roll than bread. Shortening can be used measure for measure; butter carries water as well as fat, so the result will be a little less rich. Well-rendered lard gives a very tender crumb and a mild flavor.
- Working fat into risen doughFat and sugar added after the first rise will make the dough slack and greasy-looking before it comes together. Keep kneading past the point where it seems wrong, adding flour only a spoonful at a time, or the rolls will be heavy.
- The sodaThe "small tea-spoon soda" is aimed at an over-fermented, sour sponge; it neutralizes the acid (and in doing so gives off some gas) rather than serving as the dough's leavening. If your dough smells sweet and yeasty, leave it out entirely; unneeded soda gives a soapy taste and a yellowish crumb.
- Oven heatNone is given. Enriched rolls of this kind bake at 375-400F for 15 to 20 minutes, until the tops are deep gold and the bottoms sound hollow. Higher heat scorches the sugar before the centers set.
- "Ready for the oven in twenty or thirty minutes"That is the second rise only, and it likely presumes a kitchen kept warm by the range. In a 68F room the shaped rolls may want 45 minutes to an hour; judge by a slow spring-back when pressed rather than by the clock.
- YieldAbout a dozen rolls, or fifteen small biscuit-shaped ones. They are best the day they are baked.
Buckeye Cookery, associated with Estelle Woods Wilcox and issued in the later 1870s (Ohio and Minneapolis imprints both circulated), was reprinted for decades under various titles and was assembled from contributed household recipes; it shows in entries like this one, where the instructions presume a reader already mid-way through a baking day, with a batch of bread dough at its last molding. Enriching a piece of that dough with egg, sugar and fat to make rolls or coffee cake was one common economy in a yeast-baking household, since it saved a separate ferment and used the dough at the moment it was ready. The nod to dough that is "the least bit sour" is a reminder that home yeast in this period was unreliable, often a homemade hop or potato ferment, and that a long or warm rise could tip toward acidity; a pinch of soda was a usual corrective.