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Swiss Rolls
Mix 1 ounce Vienna yeast, 1 pinch of salt, 1/4 pint tepid milk, 1 ounce of butter, and 1 pound of flour well together. Cover and set aside for 3 hours. Make into a dough with 1 1/2 gills of milk, lukewarm, and set for 1/2 hour longer. Roll into fancy shapes, set to rise in the pan for 15 minutes. Bake in a hot oven 20 minutes. Serve with coffee or chocolate, for breakfast.
These are Swiss breakfast rolls, not the jam-filled sponge the name now suggests. The method is an old two-stage sponge-and-dough, and the two things worth watching are the yeast quantity and the total liquid.
- Vienna yeastAlmost certainly fresh compressed yeast, sold in the period in cakes; compressed yeast also went by the name "German" yeast. An ounce for a pound of flour is heavy by current standards; about 1/2 ounce fresh, or 2 teaspoons of active dry or instant, gives a better flavour over the same long rise.
- Gills and pintsA gill is half a cup, so 1 1/2 gills is about 3/4 cup. The 1/4 pint of milk in the sponge is about 1/2 cup. If the book is using imperial measure the volumes run roughly 20 percent larger, which matters here.
- Total liquidRead together, the two additions come to something like 1 1/4 cups of milk for 1 pound (about 3 1/2 cups) of flour. That is a slack dough by modern flour standards. Hold back a few tablespoons of the second addition and add it only if the dough is stiff.
- Hot ovenRead as about 400 to 425F. Small shaped rolls will colour in 15 to 18 minutes at that heat; the full 20 minutes suits larger pieces. They are done at an internal temperature of about 190 to 200F.
- The sponge stageThe first three-hour rest with only part of the milk is a sponge, and much of the flavour develops there. Do not shorten it to save time; the second rest of half an hour is a brief fermentation before shaping.
- Shaping and proof"Fancy shapes" is left unspecified; knots, crescents and twists would all fit. Fifteen minutes in the pan is short for a proof at modern room temperatures; go by appearance and let them swell until visibly puffed, 25 to 40 minutes if the kitchen is cool.
- YieldAbout 12 to 16 rolls, depending on how large the shapes are cut. Best eaten the day they are baked; the original directs serving them with coffee or chocolate.
Adelaide Keen's With a Saucepan Over the Sea (1902) gathered domestic recipes from European kitchens for an American readership, and this entry belongs to the tradition of the Continental breakfast roll rather than to English cake-making. The name confuses modern readers because "Swiss roll" came to mean a rolled sponge with jam; here it simply means a roll made in the Swiss manner. The reference to "Vienna yeast" is the useful historical detail: Viennese bakers' compressed yeast, and the sponge-and-dough method associated with it, spread through European and then American baking in the second half of the nineteenth century, the period that saw soft, milk-and-butter enriched breakfast breads sold as Vienna bread and Vienna rolls. Serving them with coffee or chocolate places the dish squarely in the Continental breakfast.