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French Rolls
Rub together a pound of flour and an ounce of butter; when well blended mix with the flour and butter a small quantity of yeast with enough milk to form a stiff dough, an egg, and a little salt. Do not knead the dough, but use a wooden spoon, let it rise, and bake on tins. When brown and ready to be taken out of the oven, brush over with beaten egg, and keep the rolls a minute or two longer to dry. Time, from fifteen to twenty minutes to bake. Probable cost, 1d. each. Sufficient for six rolls.
A soft enriched roll made from a dough too slack to knead, beaten with a spoon instead. Two things in the original need translating: the yeast, which is given only as "a small quantity", and the oven, which is not given at all.
- The hinge: do not kneadThe dough is not kneaded but worked smooth with a wooden spoon. The original calls it a stiff dough, so it is a dough rather than a batter; beating with the spoon does the work kneading would. Adding further flour until it is comfortably kneadable gives a heavier, drier roll than intended.
- Yeast quantity"A small quantity of yeast" would most likely have meant wet yeast bought from a brewer or baker, and no reliable conversion exists. For a pound of flour, about 1 teaspoon of instant dried yeast or 7 g of fresh yeast is in the right range.
- MilkEnough to form a stiff dough works out at roughly 150-200 ml (about 2/3 to 7/8 cup), depending on the flour, and the egg counts as part of the liquid. Add it gradually; the mixture should just hold a shape on the spoon.
- Flour and butterA pound is about 3 1/2 cups; the ounce of butter is 2 tablespoons, rubbed in cold as for pastry. Bread flour gives a better crumb than all-purpose in a dough this wet.
- Oven temperatureThe book gives none, but fifteen to twenty minutes for rolls this size implies a hot oven: 425F/220C. At a lower heat they will pale and dry out before they colour.
- Rising"Let it rise" is the only direction given; in practice allow a single rise of about an hour to an hour and a half in a warm kitchen, until roughly doubled. Shaping onto greased tins and allowing a further 20-30 minutes before baking is a modern addition, not in the original.
- The egg glazeBrushing raw egg onto rolls that are almost out of the oven and returning them for a minute or two will set it, but the shine is more even if you glaze about five minutes before the end, or before baking.
- YieldSix rolls of about 4 oz each, best eaten the day they are made; the low fat content means they stale quickly.
"French rolls" in English cookery books rarely had much to do with France. From the eighteenth century onward the name marked a small, soft, milk-and-egg-enriched roll with a thin crust, as distinct from the plain water-and-flour loaf, and it was often said to be French simply because refinement in baking was credited to French bakers. The note of "probable cost, 1d. each" is characteristic of the book, which costed nearly everything for households running to a fixed weekly budget. The vagueness about yeast reflects the period as much as the writer: leaven came in various forms and varied in strength, so cooks judged quantity by experience and by how the dough behaved rather than by measure.