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Luncheon or Sandwich Rolls
4 cups flour 1 teaspoon salt 6 teaspoons Royal Baking Powder 1 tablespoon shortening 1 1/2 cups milk Sift together flour, salt and baking powder; rub in shortening; add milk, and mix with spoon to smooth dough easy to handle on floured board. Turn out dough; knead quickly a few times to impart smoothness; divide into small pieces; form each by hand into short, rather thick tapering rolls; place on flat greased pans and allow to stand in warm place 15 to 20 minutes; brush with milk. Bake in very hot oven. When almost baked brush again with melted butter. Bake 10 minutes longer and serve hot. If a glazed finish is desired, before taking from oven brush over with yolk of egg which has been mixed with a little water.
These rolls make excellent sandwiches, using for fillings either lettuce and mayonnaise, sliced or chopped ham, chopped seasoned cucumbers, egg and mayonnaise with a very little chopped onion and parsley, or other filling desired.
A baking-powder roll rather than a yeast roll, so the whole thing is a twenty-minute job. The original assumes you know what a "very hot oven" means and gives no total bake time.
- Oven temperature"Very hot" in this era means 450-475F. Preheat fully; these rolls rely on a fast burst of heat for lift, since there is no yeast to work with.
- Total baking timeThe recipe gives no total. "Bake 10 minutes longer" follows an unstated first stage, and since the rolls are described as "almost baked" by that point, the first stage is likely the longer of the two. Judge by colour rather than the clock.
- Baking powder quantitySix teaspoons to four cups works out at a teaspoon and a half per cup, somewhat above the modern norm, and this is a Royal Baking Powder promotional book. Four to five teaspoons of a modern double-acting powder will give a comparable rise.
- The resting periodThe 15 to 20 minutes standing in a warm place is not proofing; there is no yeast in the dough. Do not extend it much past 20 minutes, or the leavening will be largely spent before the rolls reach the oven.
- ShorteningA tablespoon of lard or vegetable shortening was intended; butter works and tastes better, but rub it in cold and quickly, as for biscuits, rather than melting it.
- Handling"Knead quickly a few times" is the hinge. This is a soft chemically leavened dough and prolonged kneading makes it tough and bready. A dozen folds is enough.
- Shaping and yieldFour cups of flour gives roughly 16 small tapering rolls, about the size of a large finger. The original asks only for them to be short, rather thick and tapering.
- The glazeEgg yolk thinned with water gives a deep shine but burns fast at 450F. Apply it in the last three or four minutes, not before.
This comes from one of the many cookbooks published by baking powder manufacturers in the early twentieth century, which existed to demonstrate that chemical leavening could replace yeast in almost anything a household baked. Quick rolls like these were the strongest argument: a cook could decide at four o'clock to have hot rolls at five, without setting a sponge the night before or keeping a barm alive in the pantry. The list of sandwich fillings at the end places the recipe in the era of the ladies' luncheon and the afternoon reception, when thin fillings between soft bread became a respectable light meal in its own right.