No. 3418

Paste for Finger Rolls and Small Rolls

Pate a Petits Pains

The ingredients are one pound of flour, two eggs, three-quarters of a gill of milk, salt, two ounces of butter, half an ounce each of sugar and yeast. Make a little leaven with a quarter of the flour and the yeast, diluting it with a little warm water; leave this in a vessel, cover and place in a temperate place so that it rises to double its height. Lay the balance of the flour on the table; make a hollow in the center and in this put a pinch of salt, the sugar and a little tepid milk, then the eggs and mix, drawing in the flour gradually and adding the rest of the tepid milk. When all is mixed bring the dough together and knead it well, striking it on the table for a few minutes (the object of this being to incorporate as much air as possible in the paste); when the paste has plenty of body add half the butter to it and continue the kneading until the butter is well worked in, then add the rest of the butter and knead again, working the paste a few minutes longer. Now put in the leaven, mixing it lightly with the dough, set into a vessel, cover with a cloth, and let it rise in a moderate temperature. As soon as this dough is sufficiently raised divide it into pieces of a pound each; roll out these into ropes half an inch in diameter, and dividing these ropes into twenty equal-sized parts give each one a round shape by rolling them on the table with the palm of the hand; roll them out to the shape of small rolls two and three-quarters inches long, pointed at both ends, and lay them on a slightly buttered baking sheet, keeping them about one inch apart, then leave them to rise in a gentle temperature. As soon as they are sufficiently raised brush them over with beaten eggs twice, and bake in a warm oven.

← No. 3417 Loaves in Boxes and Pans of Two, Seven and T Bakery & Breads No. 3419 Finger Rolls →

For the Modern Kitchen

A lightly enriched sponge-and-dough roll from Ranhofer's Delmonico's kitchen, closer to a lean brioche than to a dinner roll. Nothing here is difficult, but several of the measurements and the oven instruction need translating.

The gillA gill is half a cup, so three-quarters of a gill is 6 tablespoons (3 fl oz) of milk. The leaven takes 'a little warm water' on top of that, which the recipe does not measure; expect to add a tablespoon or two of extra liquid, since a pound of flour with two eggs and 3 oz of milk makes a firm dough.
Flour and yeast weightsA pound of flour is about 3 1/2 cups of modern all-purpose, and bread flour suits the slapping and stretching better. The half ounce of yeast means fresh compressed yeast; substitute roughly 1 1/2 teaspoons of instant dry yeast, and put a pinch of it in the sponge rather than the whole amount if you want a slower, better-flavoured rise.
The leaven is a sponge, not a starterA quarter of the flour, the yeast and enough warm water to make a soft batter, left until doubled — half an hour to an hour at room temperature. It is added at the very end, after the butter, which is unusual and deliberate: the fat goes into an unleavened dough that can take heavy handling.
Striking the doughThis is the slap-and-fold that French bakers still use: lift the dough, throw it onto the bench, fold it over itself, repeat. Ranhofer's explanation about incorporating air is not quite right — what it actually does is build gluten fast in a wet, soft dough. Work until the dough pulls away from the table cleanly before adding any butter.
Butter in two additionsThe two ounces go in halves, each fully worked in before the next. The dough will look broken and greasy for a minute or two each time; keep going and it comes back together. Cool, pliable butter works better than soft or melted.
"A moderate temperature" for risingAround 75-80F for both the bulk rise and the shaped rolls. The bulk rise takes about an hour and a half, the shaped rolls 45 minutes to an hour. Enriched dough proofs slowly; underproofed rolls split at the seam.
"A warm oven"For small egg-washed rolls this probably corresponds to somewhere in the 375-425F range; they need roughly 10 to 15 minutes, long enough to set and colour, short enough that the egg-rich crumb does not dry out. Both coats of egg wash go on once the rolls have risen, just before baking.
YieldThe whole batch weighs roughly a pound and three-quarters, so the instruction to divide into one-pound pieces and each of those into twenty gives about 35 rolls, each around 25 grams. That is a small, slim roll of the sort set beside a place setting. Halve the recipe for a domestic batch.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York for what is often given as more than thirty years, though his tenure there was interrupted, and The Epicurean (1894) is essentially that restaurant's working manual, written in the order a professional brigade would need it. The bakery chapter reflects a house that made its own bread daily in many shapes and sizes, and this dough — flour, eggs, milk, a modest amount of butter and sugar, raised on a sponge — is the standard French pâte à petits pains, the base for the finger rolls, dinner rolls and shaped breads that arrived at table already portioned. The technique of holding back the sponge until after the butter has been worked in shapes the dough, and the same dough family, enriched further, becomes brioche. The recipe's assumption that a cook will divide the dough into one-pound pieces before shaping is a tell that this was written for a kitchen scaling up, not down.