Home › Sunday Morning Breakfasts › Salad Rolls
Salad Rolls
1 cup milk 1/2 cake yeast 3 cups sifted flour 1 egg white, beaten 1 tablespoon sugar 1 teaspoon salt 1/4 cup melted shortening Scald the milk; when lukewarm add the yeast dissolved in 1/4 cup lukewarm water, and half the flour. Stir and beat the mixture until very smooth; cover and let stand at temperature of 84 degrees.F., until light; add the beaten egg white, sugar, salt and melted shortening; work in slowly the balance of flour; turn the dough onto a molding board, knead until smooth and elastic to the touch. Cover and let rise to double the bulk. Pull off bits of dough; fold and knead them into balls. As they are shaped, set them on a board lightly dredged with flour, cover closely and let rise. With handle of wooden spoon bring down nearly through center of each ball, as though to divide it. Brush with melted shortening, cleft sides and press roll together. Place rolls on greased pan, brush outside of each roll with shortening and let rise. Bake for 20 minutes in a hot oven. When nearly baked, glaze with white of egg.
A straightforward sponge-method yeast dough with an unusual shaping step. The only fussy part is the cleft: it must be pressed closed with fat between the surfaces so the roll splits open cleanly in the oven.
- YeastHalf a cake of compressed yeast is roughly 1 teaspoon of active dry or instant yeast. Dissolve active dry in the quarter cup of lukewarm water as written; instant can simply go into the flour.
- That 84 degreesThe precise figure is domestic-science exactness for "comfortably warm room." Anywhere between 75 and 85F works; the sponge is ready when it is puffed, bubbly and smells yeasty, about 45 minutes to an hour.
- ShorteningThe original means lard or a hydrogenated vegetable shortening. Melted butter gives better flavour and browning, though it carries water and milk solids and so is not an exact substitute in the dough or as the brushing fat.
- Hot ovenRead this as 400 to 425F. Twenty minutes at that heat suits small rolls of roughly 1 1/2 ounces of dough.
- The cleft is the hingePressing the wooden spoon handle nearly through, greasing both cut faces and closing the roll is what makes it break open at the seam as it bakes. If the fat is skipped, the two halves fuse and you get a plain bun.
- The final glazeOpening the oven near the end to brush on egg white costs heat. Brushing before baking gives a similar shine with less disturbance.
- YieldAbout 16 to 18 rolls from three cups of flour. Serve warm the day they are baked.
The name refers to service rather than contents: small soft rolls of this kind were commonly served with a salad course, and cookery writers of the period often catalogued dinner rolls by shape and by the meal they belonged to rather than by any difference in dough. The cleft-and-fold shaping is close to the idea behind the Parker House roll, traditionally traced to the Boston hotel of that name, where a round of dough is creased with a handle, greased and folded so it opens along the seam. The instruction to hold the sponge at a stated Fahrenheit temperature reflects the period's home-economics training, when domestic science schools taught fermentation as a measurable process.