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Baker's Rolls, American
Well dry two pounds of flour. Add two table-spoonfuls of yeast, a little salt, and half a tea-spoonful of bicarbonate of soda, dissolved in water. Mix all lightly together with a pint of milk and water; knead it well and set it on the hearth to rise, covering the bowl in which the dough is placed with a towel. Then make it up into about twelve rolls. Bake in a quick oven. Time to bake, quarter of an hour. Sufficient for twelve rolls. Probable cost, 6d.
A plain barm-and-soda roll from a British book borrowing an American name. The measurements are Imperial and the yeast is not the yeast you have.
- The yeast is the problem"Two table-spoonfuls of yeast" means liquid barm or a soft compressed cake, not modern granules. Use about 2¼ teaspoons (one 7 g sachet) of instant or active dry yeast for 2 lb of flour, and if using active dry, proof it in a little of the warm liquid first.
- Flour and liquidTwo pounds of flour is roughly 7 cups or 900 g. An Imperial pint is 20 fl oz (568 ml), which gives a fairly soft dough; hold back a few ounces and add as needed, since today's flours absorb differently from Victorian ones.
- "Well dry the flour"Flour was often stored in damp larders, and instructions to dry or air it before baking are common in books of this period. Modern bagged flour needs nothing; simply have it at room temperature.
- The bicarbonateThe half teaspoon of soda reads as insurance against sluggish barm. It contributes little with reliable modern yeast, and any excess that finds no acid to react with can leave a faint soapy note. It can be left out.
- Rising "on the hearth"That means a warm spot around 75-80F, not direct heat. Expect 1 to 1½ hours for the bulk rise and another 30-40 minutes once shaped, rather than any fixed time.
- A quick ovenAround 400-425F (200-220C). Fifteen minutes is right for rolls of this size; they are done when the base sounds hollow and the internal temperature reaches about 200F.
- YieldTwelve rolls from this dough works out at roughly 4 oz each raw, so these are substantial breakfast rolls rather than dinner rolls. Sixteen smaller ones bake in about 12 minutes.
- The cost line"Probable cost, 6d." is sixpence in pre-decimal currency, a housekeeping note for the mistress of the house and of no use at the till today.
Victorian British cookery books applied the label "American" fairly loosely to anything that struck a British kitchen as transatlantic, and here the likeliest marker is the bicarbonate of soda. Chemical leavening was taken up faster and more enthusiastically in the United States than in Britain, where soda-raised breads were often regarded with some suspicion. The combination made practical sense in an era when yeast was a live, unreliable commodity bought from a brewer or saved from the last batch: the soda gave a little extra lift if the barm proved weak. The instruction to dry the flour and to set the bowl on the hearth belongs to the same world of open ranges and damp storerooms.