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French Rolls (II)
Etta C. Springer.
One quart flour, add two eggs, one-half pint milk, tablespoon of yeast, knead it well; rise till morning. Work in one ounce of butter and mould in small rolls; bake immediately.
A plain overnight roll dough: mixed at night, enriched with butter in the morning, shaped and baked at once. The only real translation needed is the yeast, since a tablespoon of 1877 yeast is not a tablespoon of the dry granules sold today.
- The yeast is the hingeA tablespoon here means liquid homemade yeast or brewer's barm, far weaker and wetter than modern dry yeast. For an overnight room-temperature rise use about 1/2 teaspoon instant or 3/4 teaspoon active dry; a full tablespoon of modern yeast would blow the dough out and sour it by morning.
- MeasuresA quart of flour is 4 cups, roughly 500 g, scooped and levelled. Half a pint of milk is 1 cup. One ounce of butter is 2 tablespoons.
- ConsistencyFour cups of flour with 1 cup milk and 2 eggs gives a stiff dough by modern standards. Nineteenth-century flour may have behaved differently in absorption; hold back a few tablespoons of the flour and add only what the dough needs to come away from the bowl.
- Working in the butterAdding the fat after the long rise is deliberate and worth keeping. Have it soft, not melted, and knead until no streaks remain, a couple of minutes; the dough will slacken before it tightens again.
- "Bake immediately"Taken literally the shaped rolls go straight in, but a dough this well fermented benefits from 30 to 40 minutes covered on the sheet, until the rolls look puffed and hold a light fingerprint. Otherwise they bake dense and split at the seams.
- OvenNo temperature is given; the heat is left to the cook's judgement. Bake at 400F for 15 to 20 minutes, until deep gold and hollow-sounding underneath.
- Overnight timingA cool kitchen suits an overnight rise. In a warm modern room the dough may overproof by morning; refrigerate it after an hour on the counter and let it come back to room temperature before shaping.
- YieldAbout 14 to 16 small rolls, or a dozen dinner-roll-sized ones. Best the day they are baked.
"French roll" in nineteenth-century American cookbooks often meant little that a Parisian baker would recognise; it was a general label for a small, soft, enriched dinner roll, usually with egg and butter and commonly distinguished from the plain water bread of everyday baking, though the usage was loose and variable. The Home Cook Book (Chicago) was compiled from contributions by named local women, which is why this appears as Etta C. Springer's version and why a second French Roll recipe sits nearby, and the attributions were part of the point: the book was sold to raise funds and its authority came from the reputations of the cooks who signed the receipts. The overnight method reflects the yeast of the day. Before packaged compressed yeast became widely reliable, households kept a liquid yeast or barm going, slow and unpredictable enough that bread doughs were routinely set at bedtime and finished before breakfast.