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Rolls
Mrs. H. F. Waite.
To the quantity of light bread dough that you would take for twelve persons, add the white of one cgg well beaten, two tablespoons of white sugar, and two tablespoons of butter; work these thoroughly together; roli out about half an inch thick; cut the size required, and spread one with melted butter and lay another upon the top of it. Bake delicately, when they have risen.
An enrichment method rather than a full recipe: it assumes you already have risen bread dough on hand and turns it into soft, buttery split rolls. The quantities are given per batch of dough, so the only real judgement call is how much dough "for twelve persons" means.
- How much doughThe recipe gives no weight. As a working assumption, treat "for twelve persons" as a single loaf's worth of dough, roughly two pounds (about four cups of flour). Scale the egg white, sugar and butter up or down if your batch differs much from that.
- Work the enrichment in fullyThis is the hinge. Adding fat and sugar to already-risen dough will slacken it and knock out the gas, so knead until no streaks of butter remain, then let the dough recover for 15-20 minutes before rolling. Under-mixed butter gives greasy patches and uneven crumb.
- Two tablespoons is modestTwo tablespoons each of sugar and butter in two pounds of dough is a light enrichment by modern standards -- these are soft dinner rolls, not brioche. Doubling the butter is safe if you want a richer roll, but the dough will need longer to rise.
- Cutting and stackingRoll to a half inch, cut rounds with a 2- to 2.5-inch cutter, brush one with melted butter and cap it with a second. The butter layer keeps the two from fusing, so the baked roll pulls apart cleanly. A single round folded over itself, off-centre, gives the same result with less waste.
- The second rise"When they have risen" means proofed on the pan until visibly puffy and slow to spring back when pressed -- 30 to 45 minutes in a warm room for enriched dough. Underproofed rolls will burst at the seam.
- Oven temperature"Bake delicately" gives no temperature; it points to a gentle rather than fierce oven and a pale finish. A modern moderate oven, around 375-400F for 12-15 minutes, will get you there -- take them out while the tops are pale gold. These rolls are meant to stay soft.
- The egg whiteOne beaten white adds structure and a slightly drier, whiter crumb; it is not a glaze here. If you want shine on top, brush the baked rolls with more melted butter as they come out.
- YieldDepending on your cutter, a single loaf's worth of dough at this thickness will give somewhere around fifteen to twenty doubled rolls -- enough for the twelve the recipe has in mind.
This is the standard American folded dinner roll of the late nineteenth century, the form usually called a Parker House roll after the Boston hotel where it is traditionally said to have originated. Community cookbooks of the period are full of such recipes, contributed by name and assuming the reader already knows how to make plain bread -- the contribution is the variation, not the fundamentals.