Pudding!!!

Oh, squee! It's here! My pudding mold! It's so cute! I can't wait to use it! I feel so properly Dickensian. Truth be told, I'm not fond of Dickens. But Agatha Christie, whose work I am fond of, wrote a short story about Hercule Poirot called "The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding." It's quite worth the read; a cute little story about English Christmas traditions, with midnight Mass, Christmas dinner (complete with pudding), playing in the snow... Right, I've gotten sidetracked (as usual).

Pudding mold.

I'm going to make a steamed pudding and it's going to be pudding-y. Well not pudding, as in the custardy dessert. Hmm, actually I'm not sure what this will be like. Judging from  my Boston brown bread, it'll be, um, cake-y? Perhaps I should lower my expectations and hope for edible? Besides what sort of pudding should I make? Plum pudding? Figgie pudding? Perhaps I should play it safe(r) and go with a chocolate pudding?

A soft dough.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Meh, I should stop dithering and look at recipes.

Dough rolled out.

Cranberry pudding! I admit I'm choosing this one because the Beta Taster found some cranberries that have been sitting in the freezer for nearly a year. Perhaps I ought to do something with them. Besides I hate seeing food go to waste. (They've been in the freezer so they're still good, right?<Pause, while I go try one.> Tastes ok to me. Onward!)

Pudding rolled up.

As usual, we going to have to scale back on the recipe. I got a baby mold that only holds 2 cups. So scaling will be pretty drastic. The recipe starts with a quart of flour or 4 cups. Perhaps I'll try one-eighth-ing the recipe. Let's see what happens.

Steaming.

Cranberry Pudding
(Adapted from The Sweet Home Cook Book, date unknown)
Serves 2-3

1/2 cup flour
1/8 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
1/4 cup milk
1/2 cup cranberries
~1 tablespoon sugar

1. Sift together first 3 ingredients.
2. Add milk to make soft dough.
3. Roll out to a thin oblong.
4. Sprinkle with cranberries and sugar. Roll up like a cinnamon roll.
5. Place in well greased mold.
6. Steam 1 1/2 hours.

Cranberry pudding.

Results: Well, hmm. It tastes a bit like a biscuit with cranberries. It's good though. And now I want to make another. It may need more cranberries next time. Also, it tasted a bit bread-like. I may have gotten too much flour in the dough when I was rolling it out since I didn't want it to stick to the counter. Perhaps I should have simply stirred in the cranberries and foregone the rolling out of the dough. I'll do that next time. The Beta Taster wasn't too impressed. He said it's a bit bland. But I had no trouble eating it.

Finished product.

Brandy Snaps

Hello again, faithful reader.  I managed to get a cold and spent the past week either sleeping or working, but now that I'm better... Let's continue playing with desserts. Cookies this time, now that our heat wave has snapped. At least, I think they'll be cookies. Or cookie-like. Or perhaps not at all cookie-esque.

Brandy snaps!

These brandy snaps have no leavening so they won't rise but otherwise the recipe looks cookie-ish. Also, no brandy. I'm not sure why they're called brandy snaps then. Should one eat them while drinking brandy? And there is plenty of molasses and ginger. Do ginger snaps taste good with brandy? Alas, no brandy in the pantry. It's up to you, Faithful Reader, to let me know.

They don't require many ingredients.

Brandy Snaps
(adapted from Fannie Farmer's What to Have for Dinner, 1905 edition)

1/4 c molasses
2 1/2 T butter
1/2 c flour, scant
1/3 c sugar
2 1/4 t ground ginger

1. Preheat oven to 350 (or whatever your definition is of a moderate oven) and line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper.
2. Mix flour, sugar, and ginger together in a bowl.
3. Place molasses in a small saucepan and bring to just below a boil.
4. Add butter, stir until melted.
5. Stir in dry ingredients.
6. Drop by spoonfuls onto cookie sheets 3 inches apart. (about 1 tablespoon makes a cookie about 2 1/2 to 3 inches in diameter.)
7. Bake 9 to 10 minutes.
8. Let cool on sheet.

Brandy snap dough.

Results: I made lace cookies! I've never tried making them before. These're good, especially if you like ginger. They're also a bit buttery. Next time, I'll cut down on the butter, perhaps to 1 1/2 tablespoons. And of course, I halved the recipe. The next day they have a sort of candy/crunchy consistency, which I like. Yield = 18 3-inch cookies.

Peach Cream

My calendar informs me that it is fall. But the weather is awfully hot today. So I'll consult my recipes for something that doesn't involve the use of the oven or stove. And of course, since we had our greens last time, we can now move on to dessert. (Yay!)

Peach cream.

According to Fannie Farmer, Peach Cream is to be served for company and formal dinners. The recipe doesn't look particularly fussy, so I'm downgrading it to serve whenever I feel like. And I feel that today, a hot day in early October, is its day in the sun, metaphorically speaking, although you could eat this in the sunshine, if you so wished.

Peach puree.

But I did make several changes. First off, we're halving this. Next, I'm supposed to rub a can of peaches through a sieve. I'm going to use my food processor instead. While I'm not quite up on my history of kitchen appliances, I suspect the purpose of rubbing things through sieves is to make a puree and using my food processor is quicker and easier. Also of note, I'm assuming can sizes haven't changed (about 15 ounces or so).

Peach puree with lemon juice, sugar, and wine.

Last major change, I'm not using the sherry called for. I'm substituting a semi-sweet white wine because the sherry I have is old and cheap and tastes a little off. Besides I've never managed to acquire a taste for it and I don't want it in my peach cream. (I can't believe people willingly drank it.)

Peach Cream
(modified from Fannie Farmer's What to Have for Dinner, 1905)

1/2 can peaches with syrup
1/2 cup sugar
juice from 1 lemon
1/4 cup semi-sweet white wine
1 cup cream
dash salt

1. Puree peaches with syrup in food processor, place puree in bowl.
2. Add sugar, lemon juice, and wine, stirring occasionally until sugar is dissolved, about 15 minutes.
3. Place in freezer and "freeze to a mush." This takes about 1 1/2 to 2 hours, stirring occasionally.
4. Whip cream.
5. Add cream and salt to peach mixture. Stir.
6. Freeze, stirring occasionally, until desired consistency.

About ready to freeze.

Results: I think I made peach sherbet and it's delicious. The Beta Taster won't get much of this. The whole process went smoothly but made a lot of dishes. (The food processor for the peaches and the stand mixer for the cream. OK, not that many dishes, but I'm feeling lazy.) I'm glad I substituted wine for the sherry. The wine flavor was subtle but agreed well with peaches. For the second freezing, at an hour and a half, the consistency was about that of half melted ice cream and that was where I thought it best. But not being able to eat all of it, I let it keep freezing and by 4 hours, it was pretty well frozen but still scoop-able. In case you're wondering, there are 4 to 6 servings in this.

French Dressing

You might have noticed a trend while following my blog, faithful reader. You might think the only foods I like are desserts and meats and perhaps carbohydrates. While I do enjoy all those things, especially dessert, I also like fruits and vegetables. I prefer my fruits and vegetables fresh or steamed or roasted to crisp-tender (if vegetables, I'm fairly sure I'm not enthusiastic about a steamed plum nor a roasted banana). But I confess I've been avoiding the cooked vegetables after reading how long I should boil them (30 minutes for green beans, e.g.). They read more like vegetable mush with butter. But I am willing to try a salad dressing since the lettuce won't be boiled into submission.

Ingredients needed.

French salad dressing is usually a reddish color usually tasting a bit like tomatoes and on the sweet side. Wikipedia informs me that Worcestershire sauce and paprika are also key ingredients. This recipe is more of an oil and vinegar mixture with a little bit of onion juice. And I served it on a bed of iceberg lettuce (because it was on hand) with a red bell pepper (which I grew in my garden) because iceberg is a bit bland on its own. The recipe was vague on the type of vinegar to use so I used red wine vinegar. Also it calls for onion juice. I'm guessing you get onion juice by microplaning an onion and using that. Even if that's not how to get onion juice, that's what I'm going to do.

French Dressing ala 1905.

French Dressing
(adapted from Fannie Farmer's What to Have for Dinner, 1905)

1/4 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon pepper
1 tablespoons vinegar
2 tablespoons olive oil
drop onion juice

1. Whisk all ingredients together and serve on lettuce.

Results: Not too bad. Mostly it tasted like salty oil and vinegar. Next time I'll cut back on the salt but add more onion since I didn't notice any onion flavor. I'll also cut back on the olive oil; it felt a bit oily. Also, it certainly wasn't the French dressing you see in the grocery store.

Yum.

What I really like about trying these recipes is that they challenge my notion of what-ever-it-is I'm making. Most of the time, the texture and/or flavor is different from what I expect based on modern recipes. And it's fascinating to observe how tastes have changed. The idea of French dressing bring to mind a certain expectation which may or may not be similar to the expectation it raised a century ago.

Mulled Milk

Pronunciation matters.

Beta Taster: "Why would they include invalid [in' val id] recipes?"
Me: "I think they mean invalid [in vəl' id] recipes, you know, what they used to call sick people."
Beta Taster: "Ah. I was wondering why they had included recipes that don't work."

A simple, four ingredient recipe.

Sorry it's been a while, faithful reader. This one caught my eye for two reasons. Reason the first: I wanted to try an invalid recipe. I wanted to see what people 100 years ago thought how health-promoting foods should taste like (and it's likely different that what we think of when we think of health food). Reason the second: Mulled Milk. I/you/we all have heard of mulled wine or mulled cider, the warming winter beverage; but what about mulled milk? You say you haven't heard of it either? Ok. Let's try it.

Boiling the milk and cinnamon.

Mulled Milk
(recipe adapted from Marion Neil's How to Cook in Casserole Dishes, 1912)

1 cup milk, separated
2 teaspoons, scant, sugar
1 egg yolk
1/2 inch cinnamon stick

1. Boil milk, less 1 1/2 tablespoons, and cinnamon for 4 minutes. Remove cinnamon.
2. Mix sugar and egg yolk together with reserved milk.
3. Add hot milk to egg mixture, stir over heat a few minutes until it begins to thicken (but don't boil)
4. Strain and drink while hot.

Mulled milk.

Results: Too bad you're supposed to be sick to drink this. It tastes somewhere between egg nog and custard, but hot, and with a hint of cinnamon. Texture-wise: it's about as thick as a milkshake. I can see this being good for a sore throat and the flavors are pretty pedestrian, exactly what I like when I have a cold. The only downside to this drink is that after drinking it, I'm thirsty. Perhaps what I need is another.

Ham Toast

Well, since the unappetizing-sounding Cold Ham and Meat Croquettes were good, let's push our luck and try the prior entry, something called Ham Toast. (Ham Toast, in my mind, evokes head cheese, a truly unappetizing concept.) But a brief glance through the ingredients tells me it contains no ingredients I refuse to eat (bugs, brains, viscera, and raw celery). Matter of fact, it looks like ham and egg('s yolk) on toast, which I'm perfectly willing to eat.

Bread, pepper, egg, ham, cream, and butter (not shown) needed.

One problem I run into frequently is how much of any ingredient to use. The amounts of cream and pepper called for here is "a little." I figure for the amount of food being made, a little pepper in this case means a dash. A little cream is perhaps a teaspoon. Truly, I'm just making this up and hoping to recreate these recipes properly, but it is certainly fun to play around in the kitchen. (Beta Taster though wishes it would result in fewer dishes for him.)

Ready for cooking.

Ham Toast
(attempted, and likely modified, from Sweet Home Cook Book)

1 tablespoons finely chopped ham
1 egg yolk
1 teaspoon cream
dash pepper
1 slice buttered toast

1. Mix all but toast together and place in cold skillet.
2. Heat over medium heat
3. Spread over toast
4. Eat while hot.

Results: Since it should be abundantly obvious I don't quite know what I'm doing, I guessed and cooked the egg to about as done as it would be for an over medium fried egg, then I spread it about on my toast like it was a jam. And ate it. It was tasty. Quite rich, of course, what with cream and egg yolk and no white to spread out the richness.  The ham was a nice salty counterpoint to the the richness of the egg and added pepper. When I make it again, I'll likely just use the whole egg though. Since I didn't want to just throw out the white, I scrambled it and had it alongside my ham toast. And scrambled egg whites are awfully boring.

Ham toast.

Beta Taster: "Well, that's something..." Since he's not particularly fond of eggs he added hot sauce to it and politely said he'd stick to granola in the future but he's glad he tried it.

Cold Ham and Meat Croquettes

When I first heard the word "croquette," I thought it was the plural of the lawn game with mallets and hoops and balls, y'know, "croquet," singular; "croquette," plural. It made sense. It just happens to be wrong. (In English. I know no French; it could be true in French. Although croquet could be like bowling: the plural is theoretically possible, but rarely to never seen.)

Neither a lawn game, nor a flirt, nor a loaf of bread.

Upon the realization that it isn't a game, I then thought it might something like a flirty male. After all, "coquette," flirty female; "croquette," flirty male. Logical, no? Except I can think of no instances where adding an R to a word changes the gender. And gender changing usually happens with suffices rather than in the middle of the word. (e.g. actor/actress, aviator/aviatrix, comedian/comedienne, Henry/Henrietta, barrister/barista*). Quite unlikely upon reflection.

Game hen: cooked, still hot though.

When I learned it was a food, I briefly thought it perhaps was a type of bread, a sort of subclass or relative of the "baguette" as it were. <L'sigh> Wrong. All wrong. As you may have gathered, the French language and I are unacquainted. Also I tend to think words that rhyme or sound similar are, in fact, similar, which leads me into trouble often enough.  (I used to confuse dulcet and desultory. When I tried complimenting someone on their desultory voice, I got a strange look.)

Croquette filling.

Now, as you are already aware, my patient reader, a coquette is actually a breaded and fried meat and/or potato concoction. It sounds great; I like French fries, I like fried chicken. The next logical thing to do is to put them together into the same fried packet.

Patties are this big.

The version I'm going to try today has the unappealing name of "Cold Ham and Meat Croquettes." Likely this is because it begins by calling for cold ham and "cold fowl or cold fresh meat of any kind." I'm going to start with a game hen since they're small. Also there's only two of us and it might taste bad. Lastly, instead of potatoes, the recipe calls for breadcrumbs. This should be fun.

Three patties fit in my pan comfortably.

Cold Ham and Meat Croquettes
(adapted from The Sweet Home Cook Book, unknown date)

Cakes:
    1/2 cup white and dark meat from game hen, finely diced
    1/2 cup ham, finely diced, ~3 oz
    1/2 cup bread crumbs
    2 tablespoons salted butter, softened or melted
    1 tablespoon ketchup
    1 teaspoon coarse ground mustard
    1/8 teaspoon salt
    1/8 teaspoon nutmeg
    1/8 teaspoon black pepper
    1 egg yolk

Coating:
    1/4 cup bread crumbs, about
    1 egg yolk, beaten
    about 3 tablespoons butter, divided, for frying

1. Cook game hen, if necessary (350 F for 1 hour should do it).
2. Place all ingredients for cakes in a bowl, mix well. (It was a bit crumbly but mostly held together.)
3. Take a piece about the size of a golf ball and shape into a patty slightly smaller than palm of hand and about 1/2 inch thick.
4. Melt 1 tablespoon butter in frying pan over medium-low heat.
5. Brush patty with beaten yolk, cover with bread crumbs.
6. Fry 3 minutes each side, or until golden brown. Drain/cool on paper towel covered plate.
7. Wipe out pan with paper towel, shape more patties, and continue frying.

Results: Makes 10 patties, or enough to feed 3 to 4 people. I am grateful to whoever first started putting yields in recipes. I wish the trend had caught on earlier, say in time for publication. But I digress.

Croquette close up.

I was awfully nervous about using nutmeg since I've always associated it with pumpkin pie but I didn't notice it. Perhaps I could have used more. I was tempted to switch the amounts of mustard and ketchup and am glad I didn't. I was also nervous about the dice on the meats. I'm not a big fan of the Chicken McNugget texture, so I didn't want to chop them too finely but perhaps I could have gone just a little smaller. Since I don't do much frying, I rather made up how to do it. I didn't want to burn the butter nor the bread crumbs, so I kept the temperature low and opted for a longer frying time and wiped out the skillet between batches.

Cooling my croquettes.

Taste- and texture-wise, I'm pleased with the way they turned out. It was quite bread-y but that's to be expected since bread crumbs were such a large component. It perhaps could have used another egg yolk to help bind the meat and bread crumbs together since they were rather delicate and flipping the patties was a bit fiddly. If I make it again, I'd like to try replacing the breadcrumbs with the typical mashed potato. Despite those quibbles, they won't last very long.

*Yes, I know this pair doesn't work but it amuses me that they look like they should.

Boston Brown Bread

I have a confession to make. I've never tried Boston brown bread. I didn't even know it existed until after college. (I obviously didn't grow up or go to school anywhere near Boston.) The thought of taking dough and placing it in an old can to bake is one that never would have occurred to me. Although truth be told, a good many things would never occur to me, some of them, quite obvious. <insert whichever joke you like here>

Finished product.

Another confession: I didn't know what saleratus was until today. I'd seen it several times but had never followed up on it. In fact, I was avoiding recipes with it because I didn't know what it was. But it turns out saleratus is another word for baking soda. (Fun fact: the origin of this word comes from the Latin sal aeratus means "aerated salt.") I was quite prepared to go on a grocery store quest for an obscure ingredient but was pleasantly surprised to find it was a common item I already had. So let's get to it.

Ingredients needed.

Steamed Brown Bread
(Adapted from The Home Cook Book, 1877)

1 cup milk
2 tablespoons molasses
1/2 cup corn meal
1/2 cup rye flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1. Mix all ingredients together.
2. Place in a clean and greased old coffee tin.
3. Cover top with greased parchment paper, then foil.
4. Tightly tie in place with string.
5. Place in large pot (making sure pot lid covers foiled-covered tin).
6. Add boiling water to come halfway up tin.
5. Simmer gently 2 hours, or until tester inserted comes out clean.

Steaming brown bread. (N.B. Green twine gets stinky when hot and wet.)

Results: I just finished cooking it and now it's cooling. It smells delicious, except for the wet twine smell from the cooking water. (I ran out of kitchen twine and substituted regular twine which I use for tying my tomatoes. You'd best believe I'll be buying kitchen twine in the very near future.)

Finished loaf.

Oh! Where has this been all my life? Taste and texture wise, it's similar to a bran muffin but less sweet. The rye flour adds a lovely extra dimension from the usual whole wheat bread flavor and the corn meal adds a bit of texture. It's a dense loaf but I like my breads with a bit of substance. In fact, the Beta Taster may not get any. He likes to save his food treats. Whereas my philosophy is to eat it while it's fresh.

Macaroni with Cheese

Hello again. The Beta Taster and I are still working away on our Coffee Sponge, so no dessert post this time. I came across this Mac and Cheese recipe in my 1905 edition of Fannie Farmer's What to Have for Dinner. I've settled on trying this one because I wanted to compare a 110 year old recipe to how it's contemporarily made.

Two very full ramekins. Perhaps I need a larger baking dish.

Growing up, my brother and I had mac and cheese fairly frequently. It's one of the first things I remember our mom letting us cook for ourselves. Our version was the one pot version made from Velveeta and cooked on the stove. It was simple thing. Cook elbow macaroni. While pasta was draining/cooling, add Velveeta and a little milk to the pan, stir over medium heat until melted. Add pasta back in, stir to coat, and eat.

Mac and cheese: 1/2 inch thick. Perhaps I need a smaller baking dish. 

My world view was rocked when I discovered my best friend's version was the boxed version, you know the sort, with a cheese flavor packet which may or may not contain any dairy. I hadn't known there were other mac and cheeses until then. I also promptly decided that was my favorite way to make mac and cheese, mainly because it was novel.

Cooked shells.

Later on, I discovered the complicated way of making mac and cheese. The sort where you make a white sauce, melt your cheese into it, add your cooked pasta, and bake in the oven. Perhaps you top with breadcrumbs or not, as the mood, panty, and/or recipe dictate. I found this last way made the most dishes and took the longest. Perhaps that's why it was the tastiest version I've found too.

Making the white sauce.

Baked Macaroni with Cheese:
(adapted from Fannie Farmer's What to Have for Dinner, 1905 edition)

1/2 cup uncooked pasta (I used small shells)
1 T butter
1 T flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
a dash or two of ground black pepper
1 cup scalded milk
1/4 cup grated cheese, plus more for sprinkling (I used about1/2 cup total of medium cheddar.)
breadcrumbs for sprinkling

1. Cook pasta, drain, then rinse with hot water. Put in greased baking dish. A few minutes before pasta is done, begin scalding milk.
2. Melt butter in sauce pan.
3. Add flour and seasonings, stir until blended.
4. Gradually stir in milk, then stir until smooth(er) and sauce thickens. (Neither try managed to get the sauce completely smooth, but I didn't find a problem in the finished texture.)
5. Add cheese, stir until incorporated, and pour over macaroni
6. Sprinkle with more grated cheese and bread crumbs.
7. Bake at 350 F for 35 to 45 minutes or until brown or until patience runs out.

In the oven.

Results: I like this one a lot and it is undoubtedly macaroni and cheese. Perhaps a little on the salty side but I'm one of those people that almost never adds salt to their food. Also there isn't an overwhelming cheese flavor which I find kind of pleasant. Some mac and cheeses compete to see which can pack the most cheese per serving or be the richest. What's surprised me the most is that the recipe hasn't changed much in the century and a bit it's been around. The only that that really struck me was the scalding of the milk before adding it to the roux. I think I normally add cold milk and just give it a little longer to cook up.

Coffee Sponge

Well, the rolls were good; but let's get back to the desserts. Beyond being a sucker for pretty packaging and/or nice names (see the Charlotte Russe entry), I also like things that catch my imagination. Let's take the Coffee Sponge for our case study. Now, a sponge, I'm familiar with. In the kitchen, it's sometimes a cleaning implement. Or it could be a starter culture for more involved bread recipes. With a bit more thinking, there's also a sponge cake. Perhaps this will be like that? Outside the kitchen, it's a sea critter or an insult. And I'm sure there are a other few usages I'm forgetting.

Start with coffee.

Since this is a blog about food, let's go back to the culinary possibilities of the word "sponge." I came across this in a dinner menu and its placement indicates it's likely a  dessert. Coffee sponge cake? Looking at the ingredients, likely not. Well, since I have no idea what this'll be (a coffee meringue?), let's try it.

Egg whites in stiff peaks.

Coffee Sponge:
(adapted from Fannie Farmer's What to have for Dinner, 1905 edition)

2 tablespoons granulated gelatin
1/4 cup cold water
2 cups strong coffee
1 cup sugar
whites 3 eggs

1. Soak gelatin in cold water in large bowl.
2. Add  hot coffee, stir until gelatin is dissolved.
3. Then add sugar, stir until sugar dissolves.
4. Set bowl with coffee mixture in larger pan of ice water and cool slightly
5. While coffee mixture is cooling, beat egg whites until stiff peaks form.
6. Beat coffee mixture until peaks almost form. (N.B. recipe as originally written says to beat until stiff. But after 10 minutes or so with my electric hand mixer, I got bored and gave up.)
7. Add whites of eggs and continue beating until soft peaks form.
8. Place bowl in fridge to chill. (Technically it belongs in a pudding mold, but I don't have one, so I'm making this part up.)
9. Once thoroughly chilled and set up. Scoop out of bowl and serve with cream (or milk, if you prefer).

Whipping the coffee, gelatin, sugar mixture.

Results: One of these days, I'm going to remember that the recipes in this book make enough for, oh I don't know, perhaps eight or a round dozen. I ended up having to change bowls while beating the coffee-sugar-gelatin because my medium sized mixing bowl was looking a bit small for the volume. (Besides the poor coffee maker was getting splattered with sweet coffee froth, which it surely didn't deserve.) So I tossed the ice water in the larger bowl and used that.

Once the egg whites are added, the recipe as originally written says to beat until the "mixture will hold its shape." But I only got it to soft peaks and as it didn't seem to be going further, I stopped beating and put it in the fridge. I'm not sure how long it takes to set but mine was done after 5 hours.

I made a coffee sponge!

Taste-wise, it's a sweet, frothy concoction with a bit of coffee flavor with a - well, the best description I have is - a sponge-like texture. I tried a bite before putting it in the fridge and was punished with a cloyingly sweet coffee flavored froth. I'm glad the texture improved as the gelatin set. But it was still very sweet. I had some whipping cream in the fridge so I poured a bit around my scoops and found that really helped cut back the sweetness.

Oh, if you want to follow the recipe as originally written, you are supposed to unmold it after it sets and serve with (yet more) sugar and thin cream.

Dinner Rolls

I consider myself a decent baker, in general. But I am very proud of my ability to make a loaf of wheat bread. I've got one recipe I've been making for about 20 years on and off, and I've just about mastered it; I can make it just the way the Beta Taster and I like it consistently. On those rare occasions when it doesn't work, I can usually pin point exactly where I've gone wrong. (It's typically old yeast.) Now anything beyond my one recipe, I get nervous, but I've been wanting to give old bread recipes a try.

Roll with raspberry jam.

So with some trepidation, I'm going to delve into rolls today. (What? I tried making jam the other day, as you do, and now I have to find something to put it on.) I've seen several recipes for various types breads with no mention of yeast (nor any other leavener), which makes it tricky because it's a guessing game of how much yeast to use (or even whether to leaven it with yeast). I'd typically estimate the amount of yeast to use based on the amount of flour to add, but some recipes outfox me by simply saying add flour to make a stiff dough. But what I like about the recipe I'm trying today is that it mentions how much yeast and flour to add, so I'm willing to make the attempt.

Milk scalded with butter, salt, and sugar added. Almost ready to add to yeast.

Another cause of trepidation is flour. Off the top of my head, here are a few of the flours called for within a few pages of the Sweet Home Cook Book bread chapter: Indian meal, corn meal, buckwheat flour, rye flour, graham flour, and flour. Wikipedia directs me to corn meal when I search for Indian meal. Corn meal, I've also seen in the grocery store and that's great but how finely ground was corn meal 110 years ago? Coarse, medium, or fine by today's standards? And how exactly does Indian meal differ from corn meal? Perhaps a different strain of corn? If so, what should I use as an alternative? Buckwheat flour is fine. I've seen that in the grocery store. Also, rye flour. But graham flour? Oh, lordy.

White flour was used.

Rev. Sylvester Graham (the inventor of graham crackers, in case you were wondering) thought we should be using all parts of the wheat berry for making flour. But I thought that was what whole wheat flour was.  Does this mean that whole wheat flour today was called graham flour then and what we call graham flour today is something else? I haven't seen any recipes call for whole wheat flour, just graham flour. So when I see graham flour, perhaps I'll understand that to mean whole wheat flour. (By the way, in Canada, whole wheat is not actually the whole grain.) Really now, how does graham flour differ from whole wheat flour? Because I seem to recall seeing both in the grocery store.

Ready for kneading.

Bah! Flour is far more complicated than I thought. Luckily there are also recipes that call for flour. If there are no immediately preceding adjectives and flour is the ingredient called for, I am taking it to understand that I should use all purpose flour (bleached or not, whichever I happen to have in the pantry), since the technology for making white flour was known at the time when my cook books were written. Now without further ado:

Post kneading

Dinner Rolls

(adapted from Fannie Farmer's What to Have for Dinner, 1905 edition)

1/2 cup scalded milk

1 tablespoon butter

1 1/2 teaspoons sugar

1/4 teaspoon salt

3/8 cake yeast dissolved in 

2 tablespoons warm water

1 1/4 to 1 1/2 cups flour

1. Dissolve yeast in warm water in medium bowl.
2. Scald milk in small saucepan. Turn off heat when milk is just below boiling. Add butter, sugar, and salt. Stir until butter is melted.
3. When contents of saucepan are lukewarm, add to dissolved yeast. Stir.
4. Stir in 3/4 cup flour.
5. Cover with a dishtowel and let rise 1 hour.
6. Stir down and add 1/3 cup flour, dough should be able to be kneaded.
7. Turn out onto floured surface and knead and add flour as necessary until dough becomes smooth and elastic. (The recipe estimated 2/3 cup should be added in the second flour addition, I found I only needed about a half cup.)
8. Cover with dishtowel and let rise 45 minutes. (I sprayed the dishtowel with water until rather damp because usually at this point my dough dries out a bit.)
9. Split into 8 equal pieces and shape into balls then flatten to form circles about 1/2 to 1 inch thick (or however you feel "small biscuits" should be made). Cover with a damp dishtowel and let rise 45 minutes.
10. Use the handle of a wooden spoon to press a crease in the center of each circle, press edges together and transfer to a greased loaf pan. Let rise another 45 minutes.
11. At the 30 minute mark, preheat the oven to 375 F.
12. Bake 20 minutes.

Shaped and baked.

Results: Perfectly edible rolls. They taste just like a homemade white bread (which is to be expected), perhaps a little on the bland side (more salt next time). And perhaps a little tougher than they ought to be. (I think I have a tendency to over knead.) The most tedious part was the waiting for the dough to rise. I typically do 2 rises, so 4 was something of a shock. It took about 6 hours to make but most of the time was spent waiting.