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Parker-House Rolls
1 cake compressed yeast 1 pint milk, scalded and cooled 2 level tablespoons sugar 4 tablespoons melted lard or butter 3 pints sifted flour 1 level teaspoon salt Dissolve the yeast and sugar in the lukewarm milk; add lard or butter and half the flour. Beat until perfectly smooth; cover and let rise in a warm place one hour, or until light. Then add remainder of flour, or enough to make a dough, and the salt. Knead well; place in greased bowl; cover and let rise in a warm place for about one and a half hours, or until double in bulk. Roll out one fourth inch thick; brush over lightly with butter; cut with two-inch biscuit-cutter; crease through center heavily with dull edge of knife, and fold over in pocket-book shape. Place in well-greased, shallow pans, one inch apart. Cover and let rise until light-about three quarters of an hour. Bake ten minutes in hot oven.-
A straightforward sponge-and-dough roll, but the yeast and flour measures need translating and the oven wants a number.
- One cake compressed yeastA standard cake was about 0.6 oz of fresh yeast. Substitute one packet (2 1/4 teaspoons) of active dry or instant yeast, dissolved in the milk as directed.
- Liquid and flour measuresA pint of milk is 2 cups; 3 pints of sifted flour is 6 cups, which by weight is roughly 24 oz. Sifted flour measures light, so add the second half gradually and stop when the dough clears the bowl rather than forcing all of it in.
- Scalded and cooledScalding was traditionally done to kill bacteria in raw milk and to denature whey proteins and enzymes thought to slacken the dough; with pasteurized milk it mainly serves to warm it. Cool to about 110F before adding the yeast; much hotter and the yeast is damaged.
- Hot ovenThe book gives no temperature; 'hot oven' was conventionally somewhere in the 400-450F range, so 400-425F is a reasonable reading. Rolls this size take about 10 to 12 minutes at that heat and should be deep gold on top.
- Salt goes in lateThe salt is not added until after the sponge has risen, as is usual in sponge methods; since salt slows yeast, holding it back may help the first rise along. Once it is in, knead until the dough is smooth and elastic.
- The fold is the pointThe heavy crease with the dull edge of the knife is what makes the roll open along a seam instead of baking into a plain bun. Press hard enough to compress the dough, brush with butter before folding, and the two halves will part cleanly.
- YieldRolled a quarter-inch thick and cut with a 2-inch cutter, this much dough gives several dozen small rolls, the exact count depending on how thin you roll and how much scrap you re-roll. Set them an inch apart as directed so the sides brown; crowded together they steam and stay pale.
- Lard or butterEither works. Lard, being all fat, tends to give a slightly softer crumb and a neutral flavour; butter contributes its own flavour. Modern shortening will behave much like the lard.
The Parker House roll takes its name from the Parker House hotel in Boston, opened by Harvey D. Parker in 1855, and the folded, buttered dinner roll was one of the dishes that made the hotel's kitchen famous nationwide. The often-repeated origin story -- an angry cook flinging half-finished dough into the oven, producing the characteristic crease -- is traditional rather than documented; the fold is more plausibly a deliberate trick for getting a soft, butter-seamed roll that pulls apart at the table. By the time this loose-leaf book appeared, the recipe had long since escaped the hotel and become a standard American bread-course item, printed in cookbook after cookbook.