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Nut Buns
1/2 cup milk 1 teaspoon salt 1 cup white flour 2 tablespoons sugar 1/2 cake compressed yeast 2 tablespoons warm water Scald the milk, cool to lukewarm. Dissolve the yeast in the warm water. To the warm milk add the salt, sugar, dissolved yeast cake and the flour. Set in a warm place, and let rise an hour or more, or until light and foamy, then add the two tablespoons melted butter, one-half cup chopped nuts and about one and one-half cups flour. Knead thoroughly. Let rise about one and one-half hours, or until light. Shape into buns. Brush the tops of the buns with melted butter and sprinkle with sugar and chopped nuts. Let rise again until light and bake in a quick oven.
A small sponge-method bun dough, written in the compressed shorthand of its day: the ingredient list is incomplete and the method carries the rest. Read the whole thing before starting.
- The ingredient list is short by three itemsThe method calls for 2 tablespoons melted butter, 1/2 cup chopped nuts and about 1 1/2 cups additional flour that never appear in the list at the top. Total flour is roughly 2 1/2 cups; have it all measured before you begin.
- Half a cake of compressed yeastCakes of compressed yeast were sold in more than one size, but the familiar small cake is 0.6 oz, usually reckoned equivalent to about 2 1/4 teaspoons of active dry yeast; on that basis half a cake is roughly 1 teaspoon active dry or a scant 3/4 teaspoon instant. Instant yeast can go straight into the flour rather than being dissolved.
- Why the milk is scaldedScalding was standard when milk was raw or unreliable, but it also deactivates whey proteins that slacken a dough. With pasteurised milk you can skip it; if you do scald, cool to about 105F before the yeast goes in or you will kill it.
- The first rise is a spongeThat first hour with only 1 cup of flour is a batter, not a dough. It should be visibly bubbled and smell faintly of beer before you add the butter, nuts and remaining flour.
- A quick ovenRoughly 400 to 425F. Small enriched buns bake in about 12 to 15 minutes at that heat; watch the sugared nut topping, which will darken well before the buns are through.
- NutsWalnuts, pecans or hickory nuts all suit this. Toast and cool them first for better flavour, and chop them fine enough that they do not tear the gluten during kneading.
- ToppingBrush and sprinkle after the buns are shaped and before the final proof, as written, but be gentle with the brush. A second light brush of butter as they come out keeps the crust soft.
- YieldAbout 10 to 12 buns of roughly 2 oz each. They are best the day they are baked and stale quickly, as most low-fat enriched doughs do.
Books titled Meatless Cookery appeared in the English-speaking world in the years around the First World War, when meat conservation was promoted as a civic duty rather than a dietary preference, and nuts carried much of the argument: they were among the plainly vegetarian foods that could be pointed to as concentrated protein and fat, and cookery writers of the period put them into loaves, roasts, croquettes and, as here, bread. A nut bun is the gentlest form of that campaign -- the nuts add richness and something to chew rather than pretending to be meat. The technique itself is older and entirely conventional: a sponge set with a little flour and yeast, enriched after it ferments, which was a standard way to build a light bun. The half-cake of yeast is worth noting too, since compressed yeast was sold fresh and perishable.