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Winter Rolls
Put three quarts of flour into a large crock or jar, scald one quart of buttermilk, add one cup of lard, and pour all over the flour, beating it up well; then add one quart of cold water, stir and add one-half cup of potato yeast, or one cup of brewer's; beat in well and set in a warm place to rise over night. In the morning add salt and flour enough to make a moderately stiff dough; set in a warm place to rise, and, when risen, knead down and set to rise again. This time knead down and place in a large stone crock or bowl, covered tightly with a tin pan (to prevent the surface from drying, and set away in a cool place. When needed, turn out on a bread-board, cut off a piece as large as you wish to use, roll out to the thickness of ordinary soda biscuit, cut, and put in the oven to bake immediately. Set away the rest of the dough as before, and it will keep a week in winter, and is very convenient for hot breakfast-rolls. - Mrs. D. Buxton.
This is a keeper dough — one big fermentation that you cut from over several days — built for an unheated winter pantry. Two things need translating: the yeast, and what "a cool place" has to mean now.
- Scale it downThree quarts of flour is 12 cups, roughly 3 to 3 1/2 lb, plus two quarts of liquid. That is a bread-bakery batch. A quarter of the recipe fills a large mixing bowl and still gives several breakfasts' worth.
- The yeastPotato yeast was a home-kept ferment of boiled potato, sugar and flour; brewer's yeast was fresh barm begged from a brewery. Neither is a measured product. A half cup of potato yeast or a cup of barm is loosely equivalent to about 1 to 2 teaspoons of modern instant yeast for a batch this size — the overnight rise does the work, so err low.
- Storage is the hinge"A cool place" in an 1877 Ohio winter meant a cellar or back pantry near 40F. Refrigerate the dough at 40F or below, tightly covered, and treat it as a three- to four-day dough rather than a week. Warm dough left out for days over-ferments and turns sour and slack.
- Scalding the buttermilkThe buttermilk will break into curds when scalded. That is expected and does not hurt the rolls; the heat kills wild organisms and denatures whey proteins, which softens the crumb. Pour it over the flour hot, with the lard, as directed.
- LardOne cup of lard for three quarts of flour is a rich dough. Leaf lard or plain rendered pork fat gives the intended tenderness; butter or shortening work, with butter adding water and a slightly firmer crumb.
- Salt goes in lastSalt is held back until morning, after the sponge has risen; the recipe gives no reason, though it does keep salt off the yeast through the long overnight rise. Figure about 2 teaspoons of fine salt per quart of flour, added with the morning flour and kneaded in thoroughly.
- OvenNo temperature is given. Rolls rolled to biscuit thickness want a hot oven, 425F, for 12 to 15 minutes. "Bake immediately" is deliberate: the cold dough is already fully fermented and puffs in the oven's heat, so a long bench proof after cutting only slackens it.
- YieldA cup of dough cut into 2-inch rounds gives about six rolls; the full batch is very much larger than five dozen.
Buckeye Cookery and Practical Housekeeping (1877) came out of Marysville, Ohio, and much of it is contributed recipes signed with a neighbour's name, as this one is. The title is literal: these are rolls that only work in winter, when a back pantry or cellar stays cold enough to hold a fermented dough for days without a refrigerator. Keeping a large batch of soft dough on hand and cutting from it each morning is often said to have been a labour-saving tactic in households that baked daily, and it would explain the two yeasts on offer: potato yeast, which the cook maintained herself from one baking to the next, and brewer's barm, which was free or nearly so wherever there was a brewery. Packaged yeast was already available when this book appeared — Fleischmann's compressed yeast had been on sale since the late 1860s and was promoted at the 1876 Centennial — but its wide adoption came later, and with it the habit of mixing fresh dough each time rather than nursing a crock along through the cold months.