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Canadian Buns (Over Night)
Set a sponge overnight a yeast cake dissolved in 1 cup lukewarm water stirred into 2 cups Five Roses flour. In the morning, add 2 eggs, a little salt, 1 tablespoon sugar. Beat all together with a spoon, then add flour to make stiff dough. Knead well 15 minutes, then stand in warm place and let rise till very light. Work in with the hands ½ cup soft butter, and let rise.
When light, shape into buns. Put close together in baking pan, and put in a warm place to rise. When light, bake in moderate oven till a nice brown. Brush top with a little sugar dissolved in milk.
Note-A pleasing variety may be obtained by adding ¼ pound of shredded cocoanut. This should be done when the eggs are being added and after the dough has risen--preferably in the morning. Or, if preferred, cinnamon, candied peel, raisins, or other fruit may be added to suit taste.
A straightforward enriched overnight dough; the vagueness is all in the flour quantity and the oven. A few conversions and one structural note will get it right.
- Yeast cakeA compressed yeast cake of the sort sold in this period is usually treated as roughly equivalent to one packet (2¼ teaspoons) of active dry or instant yeast, though cake sizes varied. For an overnight sponge you can use less — a teaspoon is ample — which gives a slower, better-flavoured rise.
- The spongeThe overnight stage is only 1 cup water, 2 cups flour and the yeast: a loose batter, not a dough. Cover it and leave it at cool room temperature, not in a warm place, or it will over-ferment and smell sour by morning.
- "Flour to make stiff dough"Expect to add roughly 2 to 2½ cups more after the eggs, for about 4 to 4½ cups total. Stop while the dough is still slightly tacky; the half cup of butter worked in later will loosen it considerably.
- Butter added lastThis is the hinge. The fat goes in after the first rise and after kneading, so the gluten develops in a lean dough. Working half a cup of soft butter into a risen dough by hand is messy and takes several minutes of squeezing and folding — keep going until no streaks remain.
- Kneading timeFifteen minutes by hand is accurate for the period and still works. In a stand mixer with a dough hook, 8 to 10 minutes on medium-low is equivalent.
- Moderate ovenRoughly 350–375°F (175–190°C). Buns set close together in the pan will take 20 to 25 minutes to brown; they steam against each other and stay soft on the sides.
- The glazeAbout 1 tablespoon sugar dissolved in 2 tablespoons milk, brushed on. Applied to hot buns straight from the oven it dries to a light shine; brushed on before baking it browns faster, so watch the tops.
- Coconut, and the note's confusionThe note says to add the coconut with the eggs, which is in the morning, before the first rise — the phrase "after the dough has risen" refers to the overnight sponge. Use unsweetened shredded coconut; ¼ lb is about 1½ cups, which is a great deal, and half that is plenty for one batch.
- YieldAbout 16 to 18 buns from this quantity of dough, in a 9x13-inch pan.
The Five Roses Cook Book was published by Lake of the Woods Milling Company, whose head office was in Montreal, and distributed to purchasers of its flour; the recipes were largely solicited from Canadian housewives, which is why so many of them read as household shorthand rather than tested formulas. The overnight sponge method here belongs to an era before reliable dry yeast: a small amount of compressed yeast was coaxed along in a wet batter for eight or ten hours, presumably to give it a head start and, it is often said, to stretch a perishable ingredient. The name "Canadian Buns" tells you little about origin — it is a label applied by a Canadian mill to a bun that is essentially a butter-enriched breakfast roll, and the note offering coconut, cinnamon, peel or raisins reflects how such doughs actually worked in a household: one base, varied by whatever the pantry held.