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High Biscuit
On baking days, reserve one small loaf and mix a rounded tablespoon butter, a level table-spoon sugar and one egg into it by pulling it to pieces with the hands; knead into a loaf, let it rise, then, by rolling between the hands, make into balls the size of a small hen's egg, place in rows in very well greased dripping-pan; when half full raise the end that is empty almost perpendicular, and shake gently until the balls slide compactly together, then add more, and continue doing so until the pan is full; rub over the top with melted butter, let rise until very light, and bake. - Mildred.
An enrichment trick from the days when bread dough was made in large batches: a piece of plain white dough is worked over with butter, sugar and egg to make soft pull-apart rolls. The original gives no oven temperature, so the numbers below are the ones to supply.
- "One small loaf" of doughThis means a portion of raw bread dough set aside on baking day, perhaps 1 to 1 1/4 lb. Any lean white bread dough at the end of its first rise will do, including a supermarket dough ball left to come to room temperature.
- Working in the enrichmentTearing the dough apart with the hands is the point. Butter, sugar and egg will not knead into an intact dough ball; shredding it lets the fat and liquid coat the pieces before you press it back together. Expect it to look broken and slick for several minutes before it comes smooth.
- A second full riseThe added fat and sugar slow the yeast, so the loaf-stage rise after enriching will take noticeably longer than the plain dough did; allow well over an hour at room temperature.
- Dripping-panA heavy rimmed roasting or sheet pan. A 9x13-inch baking pan works better for these, since the sides support the rolls as they press together.
- The shaking trickTilting the half-filled pan to slide the balls tight against one another is what makes them bake into a joined slab with soft sides. The recipe wants them packed compactly, so they should already be touching before the final rise.
- Oven temperatureBuckeye Cookery assumes a wood range and says only "bake." For enriched pull-apart rolls this size, 375°F for 18 to 22 minutes should give a set crumb without the sugar and butter-brushed tops scorching. They are done at an internal temperature of about 190°F.
- YieldBalls the size of a small hen's egg run about 1 1/2 oz each, so a pound of dough gives roughly 10 or 11 rolls, nearer 13 once the butter, sugar and egg are worked in — one 9x13 pan.
- Final proof"Let rise until very light" means nearly doubled and visibly puffy, with a dent from a fingertip filling back in slowly. Underproofed rolls will split at the seams where they touch.
Recipes of this kind exist because nineteenth-century bread was made in bulk on a fixed baking day, and a cook who wanted something better than plain bread for tea worked with what was already rising in the trough rather than starting a separate dough. Enriching a broken-off piece with butter, sugar and an egg loosely echoes the enriched doughs behind Sally Lunn, rusks and the older "French rolls" of American cookbooks, though those are not made from bread dough already in the trough — the yeast is already doing its work, so the richness is simply folded in late. The Centennial Buckeye Cook Book, published in 1876 by the ladies of the First Congregational Church in Marysville, Ohio, was followed in 1877 by Buckeye Cookery and Practical Housekeeping, compiled by Estelle Woods Wilcox; the books are built from signed household contributions, and the "Mildred" at the foot of this one is typical: they credit their recipes to the women who actually used them. The name "high biscuit" is often explained by an American usage in which biscuit covered any small bread or roll, high meaning well risen rather than the flat soda biscuit of the same pages — though this is traditional reasoning rather than established fact, and the bread here is yeast-raised.