Butter Rolls
Sometimes called tea cakes, and also Sally Lunn. 2 pounds of light bread dough. 1 ounce of sugar (a spoonful). 4 ounces of butter. 3 yolks of of eggs. 1 teacup of milk or cream. 1 pound of flour to work in. Take the dough, already light, 4 hours before the meal, and mix in all the ingredients. Let rise 2 hours. Knead, then make the dough into round balls and roll them flat. Brush over with melted butter and place two of the flats together, one on the other. Press in the center. Rise an hour, and bake. When done, slip a thin shaving of fresh butter inside each and brush the top over slightly, too. Should be made very small if to serve whole, or as large as saucers, to cut.
An enriched roll built on a batch of already-risen bread dough, folded in the Parker House manner. The original gives no oven temperature and no yield, so both need supplying.
- Start with real bread dough"Light bread dough" means a plain white yeast dough that has already gone through its first rise. A bought pound of pizza or bread dough, doubled, behaves much the same way.
- A teacupIn American books of this era a teacup is usually reckoned at roughly 3/4 cup rather than the 8-ounce measuring cup, though the term was not standardised. Add the milk gradually rather than all at once, since the pound of flour worked in is an outside figure and the dough should stay soft.
- An ounce of sugarAn ounce is about two level tablespoons; the recipe's gloss "a spoonful" suggests one generous spoonful. Either way these are barely sweet rolls, closer to dinner bread than to cake.
- Oven heatNone is given. Bake at 400F for small rolls, about 12-15 minutes, or 375F for the saucer-sized ones, 18-20 minutes, until the tops are a deep gold.
- Why the butter between the layersBrushing melted butter on the flats before stacking keeps them from fusing, so the baked roll pulls apart cleanly along the seam. Pressing the center sets that hinge and stops the top disc from sliding off as it rises.
- The risesTwo hours after mixing and one hour after shaping assume a cool kitchen and a slow yeast. In a modern 70F room, watch the dough rather than the clock; the second rise is likely to be 30-45 minutes, and the shaped rolls should look puffed but not slack.
- The butter at the endSlipping a shaving of fresh butter into the hot roll lets it melt into both cut faces. Do it the moment they leave the oven.
- YieldThe ingredients come to something close to four pounds of dough, which gives roughly two dozen small rolls or eight to ten of the saucer size meant to be cut at the table.
- Sally Lunn caveatThe name is used loosely here. American Sally Lunn recipes of the period are commonly a batter or a single tall loaf rather than folded rolls, so do not expect this to match another book's version.
Rolls of this kind are the frugal end of nineteenth-century American baking: rather than mix an enriched dough from scratch, the cook borrowed two pounds of the day's bread dough and worked butter, eggs and sugar into it, a technique that turns up throughout the period under names like tea cakes and Sally Lunn. The folded-and-buttered shape is the same one that became famous as the Parker House roll, generally traced to the Boston hotel of that name in the 1870s, though the trick of stacking two buttered rounds so they open at the seam was evidently already known by the time this book appeared. The Sally Lunn label was attached to almost any rich tea bread in America; its origin is traditionally given as an eighteenth-century Bath baker, but the connection is folklore rather than record. That the recipe specifies two sizes -- tiny to serve whole, or as large as saucers to be cut -- reflects a table where bread was passed and portioned rather than plated.