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Grandmothers' Buns
(3 dozen large or 4 dozen small) 3 cups lukewarm water ½ cup lard 1 cup sugar 1 cup currants 1 tablespoon salt 1 Royal yeast cake 1½ or 2 quarts Five Roses flour.
Dissolve yeast cake in ¼ cup warm water for about 10 minutes. Melt the lard.
Put water, sugar, salt and lard into mixing pan. Add dissolved yeast cake and Five Roses flour enough to make stiff batter.
Beat hard, and let rise until light. This should be done in middle of afternoon.
At bedtime, add the currants and flour enough to make a dough stiff enough not to stick to the hands. Set in a warm place overnight. In the morning, dough should be twice original bulk. Knead lightly and let rise. Form into small buns, place in a buttered pan, and let rise again till almost treble their size. Brush the top with milk and sugar, and bake in medium hot oven ½ hour.
A large overnight sponge dough with a schedule built around a household that was awake at bedtime and again early. The quantities are for a family baking day; most modern cooks will want to halve them.
- The schedule is the recipeSponge in mid-afternoon, stiffen to a dough at bedtime, bake in the morning. The recipe sets the overnight dough in a warm place and expects it to have doubled by morning.
- Royal yeast cakeA dried, compressed yeast cake of the period, slower and less reliable than modern yeast. One packet (2¼ tsp / 7 g) of active dry yeast is the practical stand-in, and it suits the overnight timing well. Do not use two.
- Flour by the quart1½ to 2 quarts of flour is a volume measure, not liquid: on the US quart that is 6 to 8 cups, on the Canadian imperial quart nearer 7½ to 10 — in any case add only as much as the dough will take. Five Roses was milled from hard Canadian spring wheat, so bread flour is the closer match than all-purpose.
- Lard½ cup is 4 oz / 115 g. Melted and cooled to lukewarm before it meets the yeast; butter or shortening works, though lard gives the tender, slightly short crumb the recipe expects.
- CurrantsDried Zante currants, not fresh red or black currants. Plumping them in warm water for ten minutes and patting dry keeps them from scorching and from drawing moisture out of the dough.
- "Medium hot oven"Somewhere in the region of 375-400°F (190-200°C). The recipe gives half an hour; small buns will be ready sooner, so start checking early.
- The milk-and-sugar washMilk stirred with sugar until dissolved, brushed on just before baking, gives a soft glossy top rather than the hard shine of an egg wash. Brushing again the moment they leave the oven sets a light glaze.
- YieldThree to four dozen buns, more than most modern ovens will hold at once, so plan on batches; the dough also freezes well once shaped, before the final rise.
The Five Roses Cook Book was published by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company of Montreal and Winnipeg to promote its Five Roses brand flour, and much of its content came from Canadian housewives who sent in recipes such as "Grandmothers' Buns," which signals an inherited method rather than a new one. The technique here, a wet sponge left to work for hours before being stiffened into a dough, is often said to have been common while yeast was sold as a slow-acting dried cake. Currants, sugar and lard mark these as a treat bun rather than daily bread, and the sheer quantity — three or four dozen at a time — reflects a period when heating the oven was an event worth filling.