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Pocketbook Rolls
One pint of flour; one tablespoon butter; pinch of salt; one tablespoon sugar. Mix flour, sugar and salt, then rub the butter into it. Dissolve one-half yeast cake in one pint of scalded milk. Stir all together and let rise. Stir down and let rise two or three times. Cut into circles, dip the edges into melted butter, fold, and let rise again slowly. Bake in a quick oven about a half-hour.
A folded roll of the Parker House type, written in the compressed style of 1911 when a cook was assumed to know what bread dough should feel like. Two things in the text need attention before you start: the liquid ratio and the temperature of the milk.
- The flour is shortA pint of flour is about 2 cups (8-9 oz) against a full pint of milk, which gives a pourable batter, not something you can cut into circles and fold. Expect to work in another 4 to 5 cups of flour, adding it gradually until the dough is soft but handleable. Whether the omission is an error or an assumption that the cook would add flour by eye cannot be told from the text.
- Scalded milk must coolThis is the hinge. Milk scalded to just under boiling will kill the yeast on contact. Let it come down to about 110F before the yeast goes in, and do not add the yeast to the hot milk as the sentence order suggests.
- Half a yeast cakeCompressed cakes of the period were not standardised, but a common size was about 0.6 oz, which would make half roughly 0.3 oz. On that assumption, substitute about 1 1/8 teaspoons of active dry yeast, or slightly less instant.
- "Stir down and let rise two or three times"Repeated knock-backs give a finer crumb. Two rises are sufficient with modern yeast; each will take 45 minutes to an hour in a warm kitchen.
- Quick ovenRoughly 400 to 425F. Half an hour at that heat is long for small rolls; check at 15 to 18 minutes and pull them when the tops are deep gold and the bottoms sound hollow.
- Cutting and foldingRoll to about 1/3 inch, cut with a 2 1/2 to 3 inch round cutter, brush or dip the edge in melted butter, then fold not quite in half so the top overhangs. The butter keeps the fold from sealing, which is what lets the roll open like a clasp purse.
- Rise "slowly"The final proof at cool room temperature, 30 to 40 minutes, holds the fold. A hot, fast proof makes the rolls spread and lose the crease.
- YieldAbout 20 to 24 rolls from this quantity, depending on cutter size. They are best within a few hours of baking and reheat well wrapped in foil.
Pocketbook rolls take their name from the shape: a round of dough folded over on itself so the finished roll opens along a hinge like a lady's clasp purse. The same roll appears in American cookbooks as a Parker House roll, after the Boston hotel with which the folded shape is generally associated, and the butter brushed into the crease is what distinguishes it from a plain folded biscuit. The Butterick Cook Book (1911) came from a pattern company whose business was dressmaking and household guidance for the middle-class housewife, and its bread chapter reflects a kitchen where a cake of compressed yeast was bought fresh, milk was scalded as a matter of course to check souring and to soften the dough, and a batch of yeast rolls for supper was ordinary work rather than a project.