French Rolls
For about 60 split rolls. 3 large cups of water or milk. 1 large cup of yeast. 1 ounce of salt. (A heaping tablespoon.) 2 ounces of sugar. 2 ounces of lard or butter. 4 pounds of flour Set sponge at 8 in the morning with half the flour. At 12 or 1 add all the enriching ingredients and work up stiff.
All the detailed instructions for making the dough and kneading it the right away have been given already under the head of common bread. After the 4 o'clock kneading proceed to make the dough into rolls. Persons in practice find it quickest to pull of pieces of dough of right size and mould them up instantly. 1. Others cut off strips of dough, roll them in lengths and cut these up in roll sizes. 2. Mould them up round with no flour on the board and only a dust on the hands, and place them in regular rows on the table--the smoothest side down 3. Take a little rolling pin--it looks like a piece of new broom handle--and roll a depression across the middle of each, as in the cut. 4. Brush these over with the least possible melted lard or butter, using a tin-bound varnish brush for the purpose. 5. Double the rolls, the two buttered sides together as seen in the cut below, and place them in the pans diagonally, with plenty of room so they will not touch. 6. Brush over the tops of the rolls in the pans with the least possible melted lard again and set them to rise about an hour--less or more according to temperature. 7. Bake in a hot oven, about 10 minutes. Brush over with clear water when done.
Keep baking at short intervals and keep hot without drying out. The particular feature of these rolls, it is seen, is the folded shape, allowing them to be opened when done, and this is the result of brushing over with butter. Rolls placed close together in pans will part clean and entirely separate wherever they have been so greased between in the making. The preceding receipt producing fine French rolls, good enough for anything, the next are no-names. The addition of eggs and butter does not make a vast difference, but still makes them creamy colored and crisp. And if a body choose to name either of the two for some favorite hotel, need any other body kick? Possibly their name may be Parker, Tremont, Revere, Brunswick, French, Clarendon, St. James or Windsor rolls. Who shall decide or prove what they are?
No-Name Rolls. No. 1. 3 large cups of milk. 1 large cup of yeast. 3 ounces of sugar. 3 yolks of eggs. 4 ounces of butter, melted. 1 ounce of salt. All the flour the fluids will take up, or 4 1/2 pounds Make up either sponge or stiff dough, as may be most convenient. The latter way is best at night. All the ingredients may be put in at once, but the milk should not be made too warm in summer, when the dough has to be made 12 hours before wanted.
No-Name Rolls. No. 2.