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Parker House Rolls
2 cups scalded milk 3 tablespoons butter 2 tablespoons sugar 2 teaspoons salt 1 yeast cake dissolved in 1/4 cup lukewarm water Flour Add butter, sugar, and salt to milk; when lukewarm, add dissolved yeast cake and three cups of flour. Beat thoroughly, cover, and let rise until light; cut down, and add enough flour to knead (it will take about two and one-half cups). Let rise again, toss on slightly floured board, knead, pat, and roll out to one-third inch thickness. Shape with biscuit-cutter, first dipped in flour. Dip the handle of a case knife in flour, and with it make a crease through the middle of each piece; brush over one-half of each piece with melted butter, fold, and press edges together. Place in greased pan, one inch apart, cover, let rise, and bake in hot oven twelve to fifteen minutes. As rolls rise they will part slightly, and if hastened in rising are apt to lose their shape.
Parker House Rolls may be shaped by cutting or tearing off small pieces of dough, and shaping round like a biscuit; place in rows on floured board,cover, and let rise fifteen minutes. With handle of large wooden spoon, or toy rolling-pin, roll through centre of each biscuit, brush edge of lower havles with melted butter, fold, press lightly, place in buttered pan one inch apart, cover, let rise, and bake.
A classic soft milk-dough roll, folded so it opens along a butter seam. The recipe is sound as written; only the yeast, the oven wording and a few vanished tools need translating.
- The yeast cakeOne compressed yeast cake of the period is replaced by one packet (2 1/4 teaspoons) of active dry yeast, still dissolved in 1/4 cup lukewarm water. Instant yeast works in the same amount and can go straight into the flour.
- "Hot oven"Read that as 400-425F. Twelve to fifteen minutes at that heat gives a pale gold top; a brush of melted butter as they come out keeps the crust soft.
- Total flourThree cups go into the sponge and about two and a half more to make a kneadable dough, so budget roughly 5 1/2 cups. Milk absorbency varies; stop when the dough is soft and slightly tacky rather than driving in the full amount.
- Scalding the milkScalding is usually explained as dealing with enzymes and bacteria in raw milk, though it also affects the milk proteins. With pasteurised milk it is generally held unnecessary, but heating it does melt the butter and dissolve the sugar and salt cleanly. Cool to lukewarm, about 110F, before the yeast goes in.
- "Cut down"This means deflate the risen sponge by cutting through it with a spoon or knife, the older equivalent of punching down.
- Case knife and toy rolling-pinA case knife is an ordinary table knife; its floured handle presses the crease that makes the fold. A chopstick, the handle of a wooden spoon, or a thin dowel does the same work.
- Don't rush the last riseThe warning in the text is the hinge of the recipe. Rolls proofed too warm or too fast slump and lose the fold; give the shaped rolls 30-45 minutes at room temperature until puffy but not billowing.
- YieldThe recipe does not state a cutter size; rolled to one-third inch, a medium biscuit-cutter will give somewhere in the region of two and a half to three and a half dozen rolls depending on the cutter used. They freeze well once baked and cooled.
The roll takes its name from the Parker House hotel in Boston, opened in 1855, where the folded, butter-seamed dinner roll became a house signature; the story that a temperamental baker flung unfinished dough into the oven is traditional rather than documented. By the end of the nineteenth century the shape was standard in New England cookery instruction, and versions like this one, with a scalded-milk sponge and a crease made with a knife handle, circulated through the Boston Cooking School lineage into general household manuals. Its appeal in a chapter on bread making is practical: the same soft enriched dough that makes a loaf is simply cut, creased and folded, so a cook already baking bread gets a company-worthy roll with no new technique.