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.