Home › Breakfast And Tea Cakes › Every-Day Rolls
Every-Day Rolls
Take a piece of bread dough on baking day, when molded out the last time, about enough for a small loaf, spread out a little, add last time, about enough for a small loaf, spread out a little, add one egg, two table-spoons of sugar, and three-fourths cup of lard; add a little flour and a small tea-spoon soda if the least bit sour; mix well, let rise , mold into rolls or biscuits, set to rise again, and they will be ready for the oven in twenty or thirty minutes.
A thrift recipe: you hijack a lump of your own bread dough on baking day and enrich it into soft rolls. The transcription repeats a phrase ("molded out the last time, about enough for a small loaf") — an artifact of the original printing, not two separate steps.
- How much dough"Enough for a small loaf" is roughly 1 to 1 1/4 lb of risen bread dough, about the size of a grapefruit. Any plain white bread dough at its final shaping stage works; store-bought frozen dough, thawed and risen, is a reasonable substitute.
- The lard is a lotThree-fourths cup of lard against a pound of dough is exceptionally rich by modern standards and will slow the rise considerably. A quarter to a third of a cup gives tender rolls that still prove in a normal time; butter or shortening can stand in for the lard, with some loss of the characteristic flavor.
- Working fat into risen doughThis is the hinge. Adding egg, sugar and fat to already-risen dough coats the gluten and slackens it, so the mixture will look slack and greasy at first. Keep kneading — five to eight minutes by hand, less in a stand mixer with the dough hook — until it comes back together smooth and elastic before setting it to rise.
- The sodaThe "small tea-spoon soda if the least bit sour" is there chiefly to neutralize acid in an overproofed batch, though that reaction also gives a little extra lift. With dough taken at the right moment it is probably unnecessary; a scant 1/4 teaspoon, sifted with a spoonful of flour, is plenty — much more and the rolls can taste soapy.
- "A little flour"Add flour only as needed to bring the enriched dough back to a soft, barely tacky consistency — probably 1/4 to 1/2 cup. Too much and the rolls turn bready rather than tender.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given because the original cook judged her range. Bake enriched rolls of this kind at 375-400F for 15 to 20 minutes, until deep gold; the sugar and egg brown faster than plain bread, so watch the tops.
- The twenty or thirty minutesThat figure is the second rise, not the bake. Shaped rolls in a warm kitchen will be visibly puffed and springy in about that time; a cool room may need 45 minutes.
- YieldAbout 12 to 16 rolls or biscuit-sized rounds, depending on how large you shape them.
Recipes like this one belong to the economy of the weekly baking day, when a household mixed one large batch of bread dough and then diverted portions of it to other purposes — rolls, coffee cake, doughnuts, fried dough for the children. Enriching plain bread dough with egg, sugar and fat was quicker and cheaper than starting a separate sponge, and it appears in American cookbooks through the nineteenth century under names like "every-day rolls," "tea rolls" and "raised biscuit." The tell-tale line here is the soda "if the least bit sour": before commercial yeast was reliable and refrigeration common, dough left too long in a warm kitchen picked up acid, and a pinch of soda was a common corrective.