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Fancy Twist Rolls
For variety's sake a few simple shapes should be practiced, besides the plain, round and oblong kinds Sandwich Rolls. 1 pound of puff-paste. 2 pounds of French roll dough. Roll out in thin sheets, separately, place one on the other, fold over in three, like pie paste, and roll out thin. Fold over and roll out once more; then cut out and butter and fold over to make pocket-book rolls, or else in round biscuits. Rise and bake same as rolls. When no pie paste on hand, butter may be spread and rolled into the dough with the same effect.
This is a laminated roll — bread dough and puff paste rolled together — an early relative of the croissant that trades some flake for the chew of a yeasted roll. The instructions assume you already have both doughs in the shop, which is where the modern cook has to fill in.
- The hinge: temperatureButter and dough must be the same firmness when you roll them together, cool but pliable, around 60F. If the butter is fridge-hard it shatters and streaks; if the kitchen is warm it melts into the dough and you get a greasy plain roll instead of layers.
- What French roll dough meansA lean-to-modest white yeast dough — flour, water or milk, a little butter and sugar, salt, yeast — generally on the firm side. Any straight-dough dinner roll recipe scaled to 2 lb of finished dough works.
- Puff-paste substituteThe final sentence is the practical route: skip the separate puff paste and laminate butter directly into the roll dough. For 2 lb of dough, 5 to 6 oz of butter, beaten flat between parchment into a rectangular slab, gives roughly the same fat ratio as adding a pound of puff paste.
- Two turns onlyThe recipe gives one three-fold, a roll, then a second fold and roll. Resist adding more. Yeast dough will not tolerate the sheeting a pure puff paste does — the gluten tightens and the layers blur.
- Rest between turnsNot mentioned in the recipe. At home, give 20 to 30 minutes in the refrigerator between turns so the dough relaxes and the butter refirms.
- Pocket-book rollsCut rounds or squares, brush with soft butter, crease off-centre with the back of a knife and fold over so the top edge sits slightly short of the bottom — the shape of a folded wallet. The butter keeps the fold from sealing shut, so it opens like a book when baked.
- Rise and bakeProof at room temperature rather than in a warm proofer; much above 80F the butter softens enough to leak from the layers. Allow 45 to 75 minutes, until visibly puffed but not doubled. Bake at 400 to 425F for 12 to 18 minutes depending on size, to a deep gold.
- YieldThree pounds of dough gives roughly 24 to 30 rolls at 1.5 to 2 oz each. The dough can be shaped and held overnight in the refrigerator, then brought to room temperature to finish proofing.
Laminated yeast rolls of this kind sat between the baker's bench and the pastry bench, which is exactly why a book aimed at the American pastry cook covers them: the pastry man already had puff-paste on hand, and folding it into the day's roll dough produced a fancy shape. The technique of rolling butter into a raised dough is old and widely distributed across northern Europe — Danish and Viennese bakers built whole traditions on it. The "pocket-book" name is a plain descriptive one from the era, when a pocket-book meant a folding wallet or notecase rather than a paperback; American hotel and restaurant menus of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries list Parker House, pocket-book and clover-leaf rolls side by side as standard bread-basket shapes.