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Quick Parker House Rolls
Sift together 2 1/2 cups bread flour 1 tablespoon sugar and 1 teaspoon salt. With tips of fingers work in 2 tablespoons shortening. Add 1 yeast cake dissolved in 1/3 cup lukewarm water and 1/2 cup milk. Beat well, let rise, turn out on floured cloth or board and roll lightly 1/3 inch thick. Shape in long ovals, dip lower half in Melted butter, fold double, buttered side up, and place in pans close together. Let rise and bake in hot oven 10 minutes at 425 degrees F. and 10 minutes at 400 degrees F. Brush with melted butter just before removing from oven.
A compact yeast dough that behaves like any modern enriched roll dough; the only real gaps are the ones the original leaves unstated — rising times, dough temperature and yield.
- The yeast cakeOne yeast cake is a 0.6 oz block of compressed fresh yeast, still sold in some markets but easily replaced by one packet (2 1/4 teaspoons) of active dry or instant yeast. Dissolve dry yeast in the 1/3 cup lukewarm water as written; instant can go straight into the flour.
- Warm the milkThe recipe simply says "and 1/2 cup milk," but milk straight from the refrigerator will slow the rise. Bring it to about 100F, the same lukewarm as the water. Many period recipes called for scalding milk first; pasteurized milk needs no scalding.
- Rising times"Let rise" means until roughly doubled — about 1 to 1 1/2 hours for the first rise in a warm kitchen, and 30 to 45 minutes for the shaped rolls, until they look puffed and hold a fingerprint. Go by the dough, not the clock; a cool room can double both figures.
- The fold is the whole pointRoll to a scant 1/3 inch, cut ovals, then crease each one off-center with the back of a knife before folding, so the top half slightly overhangs the bottom. The butter between the layers keeps them from knitting together, which is what gives a Parker House roll its hinge and its pull-apart seam.
- Pans close togetherSetting the rolls with their sides nearly touching is deliberate. They rise into one another and stay pale and soft on the sides, with browning only on top.
- OvenThe temperatures are already given in numbers: 425F for 10 minutes, then 400F for 10. Total 20 minutes; pull them when the tops are deep gold and the internal temperature is around 190F.
- YieldTwo and a half cups of flour gives roughly 12 to 16 rolls depending on how large you cut the ovals. Enough for a luncheon table of six to eight.
- Butter twiceThe melted butter inside the fold and the brush at the end are both structural to the result — the first keeps the layers separate, the second gives the glossy, slightly salty top. Do not skip the final brushing while the rolls are still in the pan and hot.
Parker House rolls take their name from the Parker House hotel in Boston, which opened in 1855 and is generally credited with the folded, butter-seamed dinner roll that spread from its dining room into American cookbooks by the end of the century. The origin story usually told hat a baker or an annoyed cook flung half-finished dough into the oven folded over s traditional rather than documented, and appears in several conflicting versions. By the time this book was compiled the roll seems to have been a familiar fixture of the luncheon and supper table, respectable enough to need no explanation, and the word "Quick" in the title signals a straight-dough method rather than the overnight sponge that a more formal bread recipe of the same period would have called for.