Petits Pains
Take a portion of the dough flat as it lies and without working it at all, spread it with hands and rolling-pin to a sheet less than an inch thick. Cut this into 2 1/2 inch squares. Take two opposite corners and press them into the middle, making long cushion shapes with pointed ends. Place them smooth side up on baking pans with plenty of room between. Brush over with water. Let rise nearly an hour. Just before putting in the oven cut them lengthwise with a down stroke so as to nearly divide the two halves. Bake in a hot oven about ten minutes.
This is a shaping and baking method rather than a full formula — the dough is assumed to be the plain bread or roll dough given elsewhere in the book. The instructions are sound, but a few of the terms need translating.
- Which doughAny lean yeast dough — flour, water, salt, yeast, perhaps a little milk, butter and sugar — that has had a full first rise. The book expects you to have it already proofed and resting in bulk; nothing here develops gluten, which is the point of the next note.
- "Without working it at all"This is the hinge. The dough is pressed out straight from the bulk rise, without re-kneading, so the gas structure survives into the shaped roll. Re-kneading tightens it and you lose the open, light crumb these are meant to have.
- Sheet and squares"Less than an inch thick" is as close as the book gets; somewhere just under an inch is all that is specified. A 2 1/2 inch square at that thickness gives a small dinner roll once folded and risen; a 12 by 15 inch sheet would yield about 29.
- A hot oven425 to 450F. Small lean rolls want the heat high and the time short, so they set and colour before the crumb dries out.
- SteamThe water brush keeps the surface damp, which delays crust formation so the rolls can spring, and helps the colour. A pan of boiling water in the oven for the first few minutes works in the same direction.
- The final cutSlash with a razor blade or a very sharp thin knife, straight down, in one confident stroke. A dragging blade deflates the proofed roll; the cut should nearly separate the halves so they open into two lobes in the oven.
- Proofing time"Nearly an hour" assumes a warm bakeshop. Judge by the dough, not the clock: the rolls should look puffed and hold a slow-filling dent when pressed. Overproofed dough collapses at the slash.
- DonenessTen minutes is right for rolls this size at high heat. They should be well browned and sound hollow underneath; pale rolls will go leathery as they cool.
Petit pain is simply French for "little bread." The shaping described here — folding two opposite corners of a square into the centre to make a pointed cushion, then slashing it lengthwise — is a bakeshop trick for turning sheeted dough into uniform rolls fast, with no weighing and no rounding. The dough itself is assumed and only the handling is spelled out. The insistence on not working the dough reflects an understanding of gas retention that bakers had long before anyone explained it in terms of gluten.