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Vienna Rolls
Have ready in a bowl a table-spoon of butter or lard, made soft by warming a little, and stirring with a spoon. Add to one quart of unsifted flour two heaping tea-spoons baking powder; mix and sift thoroughly together, and place in a bowl with butter. Take more or less sweet milk as may be necessary to form a dough of usual stiffness, according to the flour (about three-fourths of a pint), put into the milk half a tea-spoon of salt, and then stir it into the flour, etc., with a spoon, forming the dough, which turn out on a board and knead sufficiently to make smooth. Roll out half an inch thick, and cut with a large round cutter; fold each one over to form a half round, wetting a little between the folds to make them stick together; place on buttered pans, so as not to touch, wash over on top with milk to give them a gloss, and bake immediately in a hot oven about twenty minutes. It will do them no harm to stand half an hour before baking, if it is desired.
This is a folded baking-powder biscuit dressed up with a Viennese name. The whole thing comes together in about ten minutes, so measure the oven heat first and mix second.
- The quantities in modern termsOne quart of unsifted flour is about 4 cups, roughly 1 lb. Three-fourths of a pint of milk is 1 1/2 cups, and the recipe is right that you may need less or more depending on the flour.
- Hot oven"hot oven" in books of this period is usually read as somewhere around 400-450F. At that heat the recipe's twenty minutes suits half-inch rounds folded double; smaller ones will need less.
- Baking powderTwo heaping teaspoons to a quart of flour is at or below current practice, which runs about a teaspoon per cup, though a heaping spoon may be half again a level one. Nineteenth-century powders varied in strength, and cream-of-tartar-and-soda mixtures were also in use. About 4 teaspoons of modern double-acting powder gives a reliable rise.
- Butter or lard, softened not meltedThe fat is warmed only until it will stir smooth, and the dry flour is then worked into it. Fully melted fat tends to give a heavier crumb, so keep the fat soft rather than liquid.
- Knead sparingly"Knead sufficiently to make smooth" means only as much as it takes to smooth the dough. This is biscuit dough, and extended kneading toughens it.
- The fold is the pointWetting between the halves is what keeps them from springing apart in the oven, but the seal should be light. A heavily moistened fold turns gummy inside.
- Milk washMilk brushed on top gives the pale gloss the recipe wants. It will not brown as deeply as an egg wash, which is the intended effect.
- YieldThe count depends on the cutter; a quart of flour rolled half an inch thick gives on the order of a dozen or so folded rolls from a 3-inch cutter. Serve them hot; baking-powder rolls stale within a few hours.
The Vienna name was a selling point in American kitchens of the 1870s and 80s. Vienna bread, made with milk and steam-baked to a thin glossy crust, drew wide attention at the 1873 Vienna World Exposition and again at the Vienna Bakery installed at the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, and for a generation afterward "Vienna" on a bread or roll signified something finer and whiter than the household loaf. What Buckeye Cookery offers here is not the yeast-raised Austrian article at all but a quick baking-powder dough folded into half-moons, brushed with milk for that same sheen. That substitution is characteristic of the book and of the moment: chemical leavening had become cheap and dependable, and a cook could borrow the prestige of a European roll without the hours of proofing. The folded shape is often said to survive in American baking as the pocketbook roll and, in yeasted form, the Parker House.