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Flour (Teaspoons salt yeast cake)
2 cups scalded milk 3 tablespoons butter 2 teaspoons salt 1 yeast cake dissolved in ¼ cup lukewarm water Add butter, sugar, and salt to milk; when lukewarm, add dissolved yeast cake and three cups of flour. Beat thoroughly, cover, and let rise until light; cut down, and add enough flour to knead (it will take about two and one-half cups). Let rise again, toss on slightly floured board, knead, pat, and roll out to one-third inch thickness. Shape with biscuit-cutter, first dipped in flour. Dip the handle of a case knife in flour, and with it make a crease through the middle of each piece; brush over one-half of each piece with SWEET FRENCH ROLLS. - Page 60. ...........
PARKER HOUSE ROLLS; SALAD ROLLS; CLOVER LEAF BISCUIT; STICKS. - Page 59.
SWEDISH TEA RING; SWEDISH TEA BRAID. - Page 64.
COFFEE CAKES (BRIOCHE). - Page 62. melted butter, fold, and press edges together. Place in greased pan, one inch apart, cover, let rise, and bake in hot oven twelve to fifteen minutes. As rolls rise they will part slightly, and if hastened in rising are apt to lose their shape.
Parker House Rolls may be shaped by cutting or tearing off small pieces of dough, and shaping round like a biscuit; place in rows on floured board, cover, and let rise fifteen minutes. With handle of large wooden spoon, or toy rolling-pin, roll through centre of each biscuit, brush edge of lower halves with melted butter, fold, press lightly, place in buttered pan one inch apart, cover, let rise, and bake. Salad or Dinner Rolls Use same ingredients as for Parker House Rolls, allowing one-fourth cup butter. Shape in small biscuits, place in rows on a floured board, cover with cloth and pan, and let rise until light and well puffed. Flour handle of wooden spoon and make a deep crease in middle of each biscuit, take up, and press edges together. Place closely in buttered pan, brushing with butter between biscuits, cover, let rise, and bake twelve to fifteen minutes in hot oven. From this same mixture crescents, braids, twists, bow-knots, clover leaves, and other fancy shapes may be made. 1 cup scalded milk 1/4 cup butter 1½ tablespoons sugar 1/2 teaspoon salt
This is the Parker House roll formula, given in the terse style of 1896: a sponge is built from scalded milk, butter, sugar, salt and yeast, then stiffened with flour and shaped. A few of its measures and terms need translating before you start.
- The yeast cakeOne compressed yeast cake of the period is usually equated with one packet of active dry or instant yeast, about 2 1/4 teaspoons, though period cakes varied in size. Dissolve it in the scant 1/4 cup of water the recipe calls for, at roughly 100-110F; water much hotter than that will damage the yeast.
- Scalded milkMilk was scalded to keep raw milk from working against the dough; the usual explanation is that it deactivates enzymes that weaken gluten. With pasteurized milk the step is generally held to be unnecessary, though warming the milk to lukewarm still speeds the first rise.
- Flour quantityNo total is given because the dough is built in stages: three cups go into the sponge, then "about two and one-half cups" more to make a kneadable dough. Expect 5 1/2 to 6 cups of all-purpose flour depending on humidity.
- Conflicting saltTwo different salt amounts appear on the page. For one cup of milk and roughly 5 1/2 cups of flour, 2 teaspoons is the sensible figure; half a teaspoon will taste flat.
- A hot ovenThe book gives no temperatures, only oven descriptions; a hot oven is conventionally read as about 400-425F. Twelve to fifteen minutes at that heat gives a pale gold roll with a soft crumb; longer dries them out.
- Case knife and toy rolling-pinA case knife is an ordinary table knife; here it is the floured handle that presses the crease which makes the roll fold over on itself. A toy rolling-pin does the same job, and the recipe itself offers the handle of a large wooden spoon as the alternative.
- Do not hurry the riseThe warning that rolls "hastened in rising are apt to lose their shape" is the hinge of the recipe. A hot proof relaxes the folded seam and the halves gape open in the oven. Let the shaped rolls rise at normal room temperature until just puffy, not doubled.
- Butter between the rollsFor salad or dinner rolls the pieces are set close and brushed with butter where they touch, so they bake into a pull-apart sheet with soft sides. Parker House rolls are spaced an inch apart to brown all round.
- YieldPerhaps two dozen rolls, depending on the cutter, though the page gives no yield. They stale quickly and are best the day they are baked.
Parker House rolls take their name from the Parker House hotel in Boston, opened by Harvey Parker in 1855, and the folded shape is traditionally credited to a baker there rather than to any documented recipe. The roll's appearance in this book with a full page of variations -- salad rolls, crescents, braids, bow-knots, clover leaves -- shows how a cooking school taught economy of instruction: one enriched milk dough, learned once, then shaped a dozen ways to fill a bread basket. The book was written for Boston households, and the base formula is named for a local hotel's roll.