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French Twists
When the Vienna Roll mixture is light, turn the dough onto the molding board, roll it out into a rectangular sheet less than 1/4 inch thick and cut this into strips 7 inches wide; cut the strips into squares, and the squares diagonally into halves. This will form pieces the shape of a triangle. Roll from the side opposite the point of the triangle so the point comes below, and bring the ends of the roll together, shaping like a horse shoe. Place on greased baking sheet, some distance apart. Let stand until light. Bake in a hot oven 15 minutes; glaze with white of egg.
This is a shaping-and-baking method rather than a full formula: it assumes you already have a batch of the book's Vienna Roll dough, risen and ready. The instructions describe what a modern baker would call croissants.
- You need the base dough firstNothing here makes dough. Find the Vienna Roll entry in the same book, or use any enriched milk-and-butter yeast dough; take it through its first rise until visibly doubled and slack before starting.
- "Hot oven"Roughly 400-450F in books of this period. At 15 minutes these are baked fast and hot, which suits a lean-to-moderately-enriched roll of this size.
- The sheet thickness is the hinge"Less than 1/4 inch" is thinner than most home bakers roll enriched dough, and it matters: a thick triangle rolls into a dense club instead of open spiral layers. Roll it thin and let the dough rest a few minutes if it fights back.
- Sizing the trianglesStrips 7 inches wide, cut into 7-inch squares and halved corner to corner, give large rolls — roughly bakery size. Halve the measurement to 3 1/2 inches for breakfast-plate rolls.
- Point underneathBringing the tip below the roll before curving it stops the crescent unwinding in the oven. Set them tip-down on the sheet and press the ends of the horseshoe only lightly.
- "Let stand until light"This is the second proof: 45 minutes to an hour in a warm kitchen, until the rolls look puffed and a fingertip dent springs back slowly. Under-proofed crescents come out tight and bready.
- The egg-white glazeAs written the glaze goes on after baking, which gives a thin sticky sheen. If you want the familiar shine and colour, brush lightly beaten white on before the rolls go in, keeping it off the cut layers at the ends so they can still open.
The crescent roll reached French baking through Vienna, not the other way round, and American cookbooks of this period preserve that lineage plainly by building the shape out of a dough called Vienna Roll. The Austrian Kipferl is documented well before the French croissant, and the popular story that it commemorates the Ottoman siege of Vienna in 1683 is traditional rather than documented. What made the French version distinct was the laminated, butter-layered dough that developed later; a recipe like this one, rolling out a plain enriched dough thin and coiling it, sits at the older end of that history.