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Rolls, French
No. 1.--Dissolve a quarter of an ounce of German yeast in a quarter of a pint of warm milk. Add a well-beaten egg, and stir the whole into a pound of flour into which an ounce of butter has been rubbed. Beat the mixture till it is stiff and smooth, let it rise for an hour, then--without kneading it--drop it in little lumps upon buttered tins, and bake in a well-heated oven. When nearly cold grate off the outer crust. Time to bake, about a quarter of an hour. No. 2.--Rub four ounces of fresh butter into two pounds of flour until it is as fine as oatmeal. Add half a tea-spoonful of salt, two beaten eggs, two table-spoonfuls of fresh yeast, and as much lukewarm milk as will make a soft dough. Dredge a little flour over this, cover the bowl with a cloth, and put it on the hearth for the dough to rise. In about two hours make it into rolls three inches long and an inch thick. Lay these on a baking-tin, and bake in a quick oven. Two or three minutes before they are done enough, brush them quickly over with milk. Time to bake, about twenty minutes. No. 3.--Rub two ounces and a half of butter into one pound of fine flour, add a pinch of salt, the whites of three eggs whisked to a firm froth, and as much lukewarm milk as will make a soft dough. Cover the bowl, and set it on the hearth or in a warm place. When the dough has risen and is light, which will be in about an hour, divide it into small rolls, and bake these in a quick oven. Time to bake, about a quarter of an hour.
Three separate methods for soft breakfast rolls, all built on the same enriched dough. The differences are worth noting before you start: No. 1 is a thick batter dropped in lumps, No. 2 a shaped dough, and No. 3 as printed has no leaven at all.
- The missing yeast in No. 3Whisked egg whites alone will not raise an hour-long dough, and the instruction to wait until it "has risen and is light" only makes sense with a ferment. Treat it as No. 1's dough with the whites folded in at the end, and add yeast at the same rate.
- German yeastCompressed fresh baker's yeast. A quarter of an ounce is about 7 g fresh, or roughly 2 g of instant dried yeast stirred straight into the flour. The "two table-spoonfuls of fresh yeast" in No. 2, being measured by the spoonful, is most likely a wet barm of variable strength rather than compressed yeast; for 2 lb of flour use about 15 g fresh or 5 g instant.
- MeasuresA quarter of a pint is 5 fl oz imperial, about 140 ml, or a little over half a US cup. A pound of flour is 450 g, or about 3½ cups scooped lightly; two pounds is 900 g.
- A quick ovenRoughly 400-425F (200-220C). Rolls this small want the heat high so they set and colour inside the fifteen to twenty minutes given. "Well-heated" in No. 1 probably implies a similar heat, though the book does not say so.
- The hearthA warm spot near the fire; in a modern kitchen any draught-free, comfortably warm corner works. Do not put the bowl anywhere the butter can melt out of the dough.
- Milk temperature"Warm" and "lukewarm" mean blood heat at most, about 100F. Milk hot enough to feel properly warm on the wrist will slow the yeast, and hotter still will kill it.
- No kneading in No. 1That dough is beaten to a stiff batter, not worked into a smooth ball, and it is deliberately handled once only. Dropping it in irregular lumps is the point; the finished rolls are meant to look rough.
- Grating off the crustAn old finishing habit for breakfast rolls, done with a fine grater once the roll is nearly cold, to leave a pale soft surface. Skip it if you want crust, and if you keep it, do it over a bowl and save the crumbs for coating.
- YieldNo. 1 and No. 3 give about ten to twelve small rolls each; No. 2, on twice the flour, gives roughly twenty. All three are best the day they are baked.
Cassell's puts three versions side by side because "French roll" in Victorian Britain described a style rather than a fixed formula: a small, soft, egg-and-butter-enriched morning bread, in contrast to the plain water doughs of everyday household loaves. The name is generally traced to the French fashion for lighter enriched breads that spread through English baking in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and by the time this dictionary appeared the term seems to have drifted a long way from Paris. The instruction to grate off the outer crust points to how these were eaten: served warm at breakfast or with tea, they were wanted soft all the way through, and grating was one way to remove a crust that had browned harder than the baker intended. The reliance on "German yeast" also dates the page. Compressed yeast, much of it imported from continental distilleries and breweries, gradually replaced the unpredictable brewer's barm called for in No. 2 during the second half of the nineteenth century, and recipes of this period often name both because kitchens were still using both.