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Sweet French Buns
1 cake FLEISCHMANN'S YEAST 1 cup milk, scalded and cooled 1/4 cup lukewarm water 1 tablespoonful sugar 4 cups sifted flour 1/4 cup sugar 3 tablespoonfuls butter 1 egg 1/2 teaspoonful lemon extract 1 teaspoonful salt BUNS made after this recipe are just as pleasing to the eye as they are delicious and appetizing.
Dissolve yeast and one tablespoonful sugar in the lukewarm liquid. Add enough flour to make an ordinary sponge--about one and one-half cups. Beat until perfectly smooth. Cover and set aside in a warm place to rise for fifty minutes, or until light.
Add sugar and butter creamed, egg beaten, lemon extract and about two and one-half cups of flour, or enough to make a moderately soft dough, and the salt with the last of the flour.
Knead until smooth and elastic, or "throw and roll" as shown on page 15. Place in greased bowl, cover and set aside in a warm place to rise until double in bulk--about one hour. Turn out on board and shape as cloverleaf rolls, or any fancy twist. Let rise until light, about one hour. Bake in hot oven fifteen minutes.
The same sponge-and-dough sequence as the booklet’s other sweet buns, slightly less enriched, with lemon as the single distinguishing flavour. The shaping is where the attention goes.
- Lemon extractHalf a teaspoon of bottled extract carries the entire character of these buns. The grated zest of one lemon, rubbed into the quarter cup of sugar with the fingers before it is creamed with the butter, gives the same flavour with more of the fruit in it.
- Milk and water togetherA cup of scalded milk and a quarter cup of water are combined and the yeast is dissolved in the mixture. Check the temperature of the whole rather than of the water alone; blood heat is the target, and scalded milk takes a while to get down to it.
- Cloverleaf shapingThree small balls of dough set into each cup of a greased muffin tin. Nothing is rolled out. Divide the dough by weight rather than by eye so the three balls in each cup rise level with one another.
- The sponge is only a cup and a halfOf four cups of flour, about a cup and a half goes into the first sponge, which then rises for fifty minutes on its own. Beat it genuinely smooth at that stage; it is where most of the crumb is decided.
- Fifteen minutes, hot oven, no glazeAround 400°F (200°C). With nothing brushed on the tops, colour is the only indicator available, and an even light brown is what is wanted. The cloverleaf shape hides underbaked seams, so give them the full fifteen.
The name is a label rather than a lineage. These differ from the Children’s Buns a page earlier by slightly less flour, no currants, and half a teaspoon of lemon extract, and nothing in the method is French in any traceable sense. American recipe books of this period used French, Vienna and Parisian freely as marks of refinement on doughs that were enriched and nothing more, and a promotional booklet had every reason to keep up the habit, since a bun with its own name is a reason to bake again next week. The lemon extract is itself of its moment: a bottled flavouring bought at the grocer’s counter, standing in for a fruit that most kitchens did not keep.