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Cream Fingers
1 cup cream 2 tablespoons sugar ¼ tablespoon salt 1 yeast cake dissolved in ¼ cup lukewarm water Five Roses flour to knead.
Scald the cream, add sugar and salt.
When lukewarm, add dissolved yeast cake and Five Roses flour enough to knead.
Knead, cover and let rise until double original bulk. Toss onto floured board and roll dough to ¼ inch thickness. Shape with lady-finger cutter or with sharp knife.
Cut strips 4 inches long by 1 inch wide, and round at corners. Cover again and let rise. Brush over with 2 tablespoons milk mixed with 1 tablespoon sugar. Bake in moderate oven. Delicious served with hot chocolate or coffee. -Mrs. E. Kelly, Naseby, Sask.
A soft enriched roll shaped like a ladyfinger, leavened with yeast rather than egg foam. The recipe gives no flour quantity and no baking time, so both need judgment.
- Yeast cakeA yeast cake of the period was compressed yeast, roughly 0.6 oz (about 17 g); it is normally replaced with one packet of active dry yeast, about 2¼ teaspoons. Dissolve it in the ¼ cup of lukewarm water as directed.
- Flour to kneadThe liquid here is 1 cup cream plus the ¼ cup used to dissolve the yeast, so expect somewhere in the region of 3 to 3½ cups of all-purpose flour. Add it gradually and stop while the dough is still slightly tacky; too much flour turns these dry and biscuit-like.
- Scalding the creamScalding was standard practice for dairy in bread doughs; it is usually explained as denaturing whey proteins that would otherwise slacken the gluten. With modern pasteurized cream it is often treated as optional, and heating then cooling to lukewarm at least guarantees the right temperature for the yeast.
- Quarter tablespoon saltAn odd measure, and it means ¾ teaspoon. That is on the low side for three cups of flour; a full teaspoon is closer to modern taste.
- Moderate oven350F to 375F. At ¼ inch thick and 4 inches long these bake quickly, roughly 10 to 14 minutes, until the tops are pale gold. They are meant to stay soft, not crisp.
- The milk-and-sugar washBrush after the second rise and just before baking, gently, so the risen strips do not deflate. The sugar in the wash is what gives the faint glaze; it will also brown faster than the crumb, so watch the last few minutes.
- Second riseCut strips proof much faster than the bulk dough. Thirty to forty minutes at room temperature is usually enough; they should look puffed rather than doubled.
- YieldRolled to ¼ inch and cut 4 inches by 1 inch, a batch this size gives three dozen or more fingers. They are best the day they are baked.
Five Roses was the flour of the Lake of the Woods Milling Company, and the Five Roses Cook Book was assembled largely from recipes sent in by Canadian women who used it, each printed with the contributor's name and town. That is why this page carries Mrs. E. Kelly of Naseby, Saskatchewan, a prairie community in a province then only a few years old. The recipe itself is yeast-raised, and borrows its cutter from the sponge-biscuit tradition, though it has none of the eggs and beaten foam of a ladyfinger, standing instead on cream for richness. Rolls and rusks of this kind may well have suited the mid-morning or evening coffee tray, which is perhaps what the closing note about hot chocolate is suggesting.