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Quick Rolls
1¾ cups bread flour 1/4 cup Argo or Kingsford's Cornstarch 1/2 teaspoon salt 3 teaspoons baking powder 1 egg, beaten light 1 tablespoon Karo, Red Label 3/4 cup milk 1/4 cup Mazola Sift together the dry ingredients, stir in the Mazola, Karo and the egg and milk mixed. Transfer to a floured board, pat to one-fourth inch thickness, cut in rounds, crease each to form a hinge, brush with a little Mazola and fold into pocket shape. Transfer to a pan oiled with Mazola and bake from twenty to twenty-five minutes in a hot oven, 375 to 400 degrees F.
A baking-powder roll from one of the Corn Products Refining Company's promotional books, which is why three brand names appear in a list of eight ingredients. Nothing here is obsolete, but the branded items need translating and the bake time needs watching.
- The cornstarch is the pointReplacing a quarter cup of the flour with cornstarch cuts the protein and gives a shorter, more tender crumb — the same trick used to fake cake flour. Do not leave it out and top up with flour, or you will get a plain biscuit.
- Karo Red LabelKaro was sold in labelled grades; Red Label was the darker, more strongly flavoured syrup, Blue Label the lighter one. One tablespoon of either light or dark corn syrup does the job here — it is there for browning and a faint sweetness, not structure.
- MazolaCorn oil. Any neutral vegetable oil substitutes exactly, in the dough, for brushing and for oiling the pan.
- OvenThe book gives the number, which is unusual and welcome: 375–400F. Use 400F for better browning on a lean, thin dough.
- Watch the timeTwenty to twenty-five minutes is long for rolls patted a quarter-inch thick and folded once. Start checking at twelve minutes and pull them when the tops are golden and the folded edge is set.
- The hingeCreasing the round off-centre with the back of a knife, then folding, is the Parker House method. The crease keeps the fold from springing open in the oven; press the top layer down lightly at the edge so it seals as it bakes.
- HandlingThis is a soft, oil-slack dough, wetter than most rolled biscuit doughs. Flour the board generously, pat rather than roll, and cut straight down.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield; a two-and-a-half-inch cutter should give a dozen or more. They are best within an hour of baking; there is no yeast and no fat crystallising into flakes to keep them interesting the next day.
This comes from a genre that dominated American home baking literature in the first decades of the twentieth century: the manufacturer's cookbook, given away free or sold for a few cents, in which every recipe calls for the company's own products by name. Argo and Kingsford's cornstarch, Karo syrup and Mazola oil were all made by the Corn Products Refining Company, formed in 1906, and a book like this exists to persuade cooks that corn oil belongs in a roll where they would have reached for butter or lard, and that cornstarch belongs in bread flour. The recipe itself is a straightforward quick roll — leavened with baking powder rather than yeast, and quick to put together. The folded pocket shape is the Parker House fold, generally traced to the Boston hotel of that name and by then a generic term for any roll creased and doubled over before baking.