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Parker House Rolls
2 cups scalded milk 1 teaspoon salt 1 tablespoon sugar 4 tablespoons butter 1 yeast cake dissolved in 2 tablespoons lukewarm water 6 cups Gold Medal flour Put the salt, sugar and butter in mixing bowl, pour over scalded milk; when cool add dissolved yeast cake and 4 cups of Gold Medal flour. Beat thoroughly. When full of bubbles add slowly two more cups of flour; turn onto a moulding board, dredge lightly with flour, knead until smooth and elastic to the touch. Return to bowl and let rise to twice its bulk; cut down, let rise again; turn onto moulding board, roll or pull out into a sheet a half inch thick, cut with pastry cutter; brush with melted butter, fold so that the upper edge overlaps the under one, press edges together. Let rise for about an hour. Bake from fifteen to twenty minutes in a hot oven.
A straightforward enriched white dough; the only genuinely dated elements are the yeast and the oven description. Everything else translates directly.
- The yeast cakeOne yeast cake meant a roughly 0.6 oz block of compressed fresh yeast. Substitute one packet (2 1/4 teaspoons) of active dry yeast, softened in the 2 tablespoons of warm water, or the same amount of instant yeast stirred straight into the flour.
- "Hot oven"In this period a hot oven is 400-425F. Fifteen to twenty minutes at 400F suits rolls of this size; they should read about 190F inside.
- Scalding the milkMilk was scalded to kill enzymes and wild bacteria in unpasteurised supply, and here it also melts the butter and dissolves the sugar and salt. With pasteurised milk you can simply heat it enough to melt the butter. Either way, let it cool to lukewarm before the yeast goes in or the yeast dies.
- The fold is the whole pointRoll to a true half inch, cut 2 1/2 to 3 inch rounds, butter generously, then fold slightly off-centre so the top edge sits past the bottom one. The butter keeps the crease from sealing shut, which is what gives the finished roll its hinge and soft inner seam.
- Flour quantitySix cups is somewhere around 1 lb 10 oz of all-purpose flour, depending how firmly it is measured. Hold back the last half cup; modern flour absorbs differently and the dough should stay slightly tacky rather than stiff.
- "Cut down"This means deflate and knock back the risen dough. The recipe calls for two bulk rises before shaping, which builds flavour; the shaped rolls then take about an hour, less in a warm kitchen.
- YieldRoughly 30 rolls from this quantity. Set them close on the pan so the sides touch and stay soft, or well apart for crisper edges.
Parker House rolls are named for the Parker House hotel in Boston, opened in 1855, where the folded roll became a fixture of the dining room; the story that a cook folded and baked a batch of half-finished dough in a fit of temper is traditional rather than documented. By the time this appeared in a milling company's promotional cookbook, the roll had long since escaped the hotel and become the standard American company bread, an enriched white dough that showed off both a good yeast and, from Gold Medal's point of view, a good flour. Books like this one were given away or sold cheaply by flour millers to teach home bakers a repertoire built around a branded sack, which is why the flour is named in the ingredient list and nothing else is.