We have a wonderful recipe in these parts for ice box rolls, whose yeast-rising dough may be prepared in advance, kept in the icebox, and brought out to be raised and baked when needed. It is perhaps exceptional or local only in that we bake it by preference in a Dutch oven with live coals for heat. Cast iron is so superior for cooking utensils to our modern aluminum that I not only cannot grieve for the pioneer hardship of cooking in iron over the hearth, but shall retire if necessary to the back yard with my two Dutch ovens, turning over all my aluminum cookers for airplanes with a secret delight. The Parker House in its hey-day could not have made rolls as good as those we make on camps in the Dutch oven. I make the rolls a trifle larger than is usual and tuck them in tightly in their buttered iron nest. I put on the heavy cover and set the oven with its three short legs either within faint warming distance of the camp fire, or out in the sun. The heat for baking, when they have risen and are ready in an hour or so, must be handled as carefully as a munitions plant handles its powder. Too little heat in baking means pale wan doughy rolls, and too much means rolls of charcoal. Only experience teaches the number and depth of hot glowing oak coals both under the oven and on the lid. When properly done, the rolls are light as feathers, done to a great flakiness, hazel-nut brown, and of a flavor achieved under no other circumstances.
My most successful Dutch oven rolls were prepared in the middle of the St. John’s River. The doctor and his wife Dessie and I were on a fishing trip on a warm winter day down the Ocklawaha River to its junction with the St. John’s, through little Lake George, to the mouth of Salt Springs Run, where we planned to cook supper and camp for the night. I had brought along my large Dutch oven and a big bowl of dough for my rolls. We fished late into the afternoon and it was plain that by the time we reached our camping place, it would be too late to set my dough to rise. There would be time enough for the baking, for the fish must be cleaned and fried. We estimated the time to the landing, and an hour and a quarter beforehand, I brought out my bowl of dough, my extra flour, my butter and my Dutch oven from under a seat of the rowboat, and while spray from the wind-swept river dashed into my face, I mixed the dough in the bowl in my lap, shaped my rolls and placed them tenderly in the Dutch oven. I put the oven far forward where the late afternoon sun would rest on the lid, and by the time we reached Salt Springs Run and the camp fire was built, the rolls had risen and were ready for the baking. They had never been so delicious. Supper was superb, the fresh-caught bass white and sweet and firm, the coffee strong and good as it can only be in the open.
We were on a little promontory at the mouth of the run, with great live oaks around us, and palms tall against the aquamarine evening sky. A full moon rose in front of us and we felt ourselves favored of all mortals. After so much delight, we might have expected to pay the piper. The night was hideous. Because the time was winter, we had assumed there would be no mosquitoes. But because the winter was warm, they had hatched, and as we lay on blankets on the sand, they descended in swarms. We built up the camp fire to make smoke to drive them away and the smoke was more annoying than the mosquitoes. Hoot owls settled in the oaks over our heads and cried jeeringly all night. Wood roaches came in and awakened us from our spasms of slumber with their sharp nibbling on our ears. When we arose at dawn, the doctor said, “You know, the only thing that kept me going through the night was remembering those rolls.”
—from Cross Creek, 1942
CLEMENTINE PADDLEFORD ON THE BEST BUNS OF 1949
In 1949, This Week Magazine, a Sunday magazine included in numerous newspapers across the country, published a booklet of the twenty best recipes in American regional cooking. The recipes were selected and tested by the food editor, Clementine Paddleford. The selection included Gloucester codfish balls, chicken hash with flannel cakes, lemon pie, Iowa ice cream, and Philadelphia cinnamon buns.
—M.K.
Sticky cinnamon buns belong to Philadelphia as do independence Hall and the Twelfth Street Market. This is a bun of true cinnamon flavor, of a stickiness incarnate.
A pilgrimage to Philadelphia in search of the bun traditional led down Race Street to the kitchen of Harriet E. Worrell. A native Philadelphian, although born in Ogden—a town named for her grandfather—scarcely a stone’s throw from Rittenhouse Square. The Ogdens and the Worrells, she told us, are cinnamon-bun families from way back—meaning they like sticky buns daily, baked at least three times a week.
Philadelphia Cinnamon Buns
1¼ cups milk
¼ cup lukewarm water
1 package dry granular yeast
5 cups sifted all-purpose flour
1½ teaspoons salt
1 tablespoon sugar
½ cup shortening
¾ cup sugar
2 eggs
¼ cup butter or margarine
½ cup brown sugar
2 teaspoons cinnamon
½ cup black walnut meats
½ cup raisins or currants
1 cup dark or light corn syrup
Scald milk, cool to lukewarm. Dissolve the yeast in water for 10 minutes and combine with milk. Make a sponge by adding two cups of flour, salt and one tablespoon sugar, beating until smooth. Set aside in a warm place. Beat shortening until light, whip in three-fourths cup sugar and add eggs one at a time, beating each in thoroughly. When the sponge is bubbly, gradually beat in shortening mixture, then knead in remaining three cups of flour. Cover and let rise in a warm place until double in bulk.
Roll a portion of the dough to one-fourth-inch thickness. Spread with softened butter or margarine, sprinkle with a mixture of brown sugar and cinnamon. Scatter on the nuts and raisins or currants and dribble with a part of the syrup. Roll as a jelly roll and cut in one-and-one-half-inch lengths. Stand buns in two deep nine-inch pans that have been well buttered and filled with syrup to a depth of one-fourth inch. Cover and let rise until double in bulk. Bake in a moderate oven (350°F.) until brown, about 45 minutes. Turn out of pans immediately. Yield: 2 dozen buns.
—from Best Recipes of 1949
ELIZABETH DAVID ON TOAST
‘No bread. Then bring me some toast!’
—Punch, 1852
‘ “Toast” said Berry, taking the two last pieces that stood in the rack. “I’m glad to get back to toast. And a loaf of brown bread that isn’t like potter’s clay.” ’
—Dornford Yates, Adèle & Co., Ward, Lock, 1931
It isn’t only fictional heroes to whom toast means home and comfort. It is related of the Duke of Wellington—I believe by Lord Ellesmere—that when he landed at Dover in 1814, after six years’ absence from England, the first order he gave at the Ship Inn was for an unlimited supply of buttered toast.
In The Origin of Food Habits (1944), H. D. Renner makes an attempt to explain the English addiction to toast. ‘The flavour of bread,’ he says, ‘can be revived to some extent by re-warming and even new flavours are created in toasting.’ This is very true, but leaves the most important part unsaid. It is surely the smell of toast that makes it so enticing, an enticement which the actuality rarely lives up to. In this it is like freshly roasted coffee, like sizzling bacon—all those early morning smells of an intensity and deliciousness which create far more than those new flavours, since they create hunger and appetite where none existed. Small wonder that the promise is never quite fulfilled. ‘Village life,’ Renner continues, ‘makes stale bread so common that toasting has become a national habit restricted to the British Isles and those countries which have been colonized by Britain.’ Surely England was not the only country where villages were isolated and bread went dry and stale? I wonder if our open fires and coal ranges were not more responsible than the high incidence of stale bread for the popularity of toast in all classes of English household. For toasting bread in front of the fire and the bars of the coal-burning range there were dozens of different devices—museums of domestic life are crammed with them, Victorian cookery books show any number of designs—as many as there are varieties of electr
ic toaster in our own day; apart from toasters for bread, there were special racks for toasting muffins and crumpets, and special pans for toasting cheese. And, as recorded in the recipe for potato bread, there were, in the nineteenth century, eminent medical men writing grave advice as to the kind of bread which, when toasted, would absorb the maximum amount of butter. That buttered toast goes back a long way in English life, and was by no means confined to country places where fresh bread was a rarity is shown by the following quotation: ‘All within the sound of Bow Bell,’ wrote Fynes Morison in Itinerary, Volume 3 (1617), ‘are in reproch called cochnies, and eaters of buttered tostes.’
Buttered toast is, then, or was, so peculiarly English a delicacy—and I use the term delicacy because that is what in our collective national memory it still is—that the following meticulous description of how it was made, at least in theory, reads poignantly indeed. It is from the hand of Miss Marian McNeill, author of that famous work The Scots Kitchen, on this occasion writing in an enchanting volume, long out of print, called The Book of Breakfasts, published in 1932:
‘Sweet light bread only a day old makes the best toast. Cut into even slices about quarter of an inch thick. It may be toasted under the grill, but the best toast is made at a bright smokeless fire. Put the slice on a toasting-fork and keep only so near the fire that it will be heated through when both sides are well browned. Move the toast about so as to brown evenly. Covered with an earthen bowl, toast will keep warm and moist.
‘If very thin, crisp toast is desired, take bread that is two days old, cut it into slices about three-eighths of an inch thick, and toast them patiently at a little distance from a clear fire till delicately browned on both sides. With a sharp knife divide each slice into two thin slices, and toast the inner sides as before. Put each slice as it is done into a toast rack.
‘For hot buttered toast, toast the bread more quickly than for ordinary toast, as it should not be crisp. Trim off the crusts and spread the toast liberally with butter that has been warmed but not allowed to oil. Cut in neat pieces, pile sandwichwise, and keep hot in a covered dish over a bowl of hot water. Use the best butter.’
I have my own childhood memories of toast-making in front of the schoolroom fire. Although I fancy that more toast fell off the fork into the fire and was irretrievably blackened than ever reached our plates, I can recall the great sense of achievement when now and again a slice did come out right, evenly golden, with a delicious smell and especially, as I remember, with the right, proper texture, so difficult to describe, and so fleeting. Only when it was hot from the fire and straight off the fork did that toast have the requisite qualities. Perhaps young children are better qualified than grown-ups to appreciate these points. And perhaps that is why buttered toast is one of those foods, like sausages, and potatoes baked in their skins, and mushrooms picked from the fields, which are never as good as they were.
Nowadays my toast is usually made on one of those ridged metal plates which goes over a gas flame or an electric burner. This produces crisp toast, very different from the kind made in front of the fire, but in its way almost as good. These lightweight metal toasters are very cheap. There is no need to buy an expensive iron one. Rye bread or 100 per cent whole wheatmeal bread both make excellent toast, but for buttered toast a light white bread is best. I prefer to make this kind of toast under the grill, electric toasters being machines with which I cannot be doing. In this I must be in a very small minority, for electric toasters are one of the most popular of all wedding presents, and in May 1975 Which? published a report on no fewer than thirteen different electric toasters. ‘Some like it well done,’ declared Which?, ‘others pale brown; some like it done slowly to give a crisp finish, others done quickly so it’s still soft inside.’ All of these pronouncements are no doubt correct, as indeed is the statement that ‘you don’t want your piece of toast to be black in the middle and white round the edges.’ That is to say, I don’t. But I know plenty of people who actually like their toast to be charred. Perhaps they prefer it charred at the edges and white in the middle, and I’m not sure how this would be achieved. Another of the report’s dictums, ‘however you like your toast, you want all pieces to be more or less the same,’ is one I don’t agree with, perhaps fortunately, for it is not easy to get all your pieces more or less the same. Unless, that is, you have a caterers’ toasting machine and caterers’ sliced bread which between them produce what I call restaurateurs’ toast, that strange substance cut in triangles and served with the pâté, and for breakfast, in all English hotels and restaurants. This English invention has in recent years become popular in France where, oddly enough, it goes by the name of toast, as opposed to real French toast which is called pain grillé, and is just what it says, grilled bread. That brings me back to the toast-making device I myself use, the metal plate or grill over the gas burner. Part of the charm of the toast produced on this device is that every piece is different, and differently marked, irregularly chequered with the marks of the grill, charred here and there, flecked with brown and gold and black … I think that the goodness of toast made in this way does depend a good deal on the initial quality of the bread, and the way it is cut. Thin slices are useless, and I don’t think that white sliced bread would be very successful—there is too much water to get rid of before the toasting process starts, and steamy bread sticks to the toaster. Thickish slices are best, preferably rather small ones which can be easily turned with grill tongs. Like most other toast, this kind is best straight from the grill. ‘If allowed to stand and become sodden, dry toast becomes indigestible. From the fire to the table is the thing,’ wrote the delightfully named Lizzie Heritage in Cassell’s Universal Cookery Book (first published 1894). And if the toast is to be buttered, I suppose we must remember Marian McNeill’s ‘use the best butter.’ What is the best butter? Unsalted, some would say. I’ll settle for any butter that’s good of its kind. The very salt butter of Wales can be perfectly delicious eaten with the right kind of toast (no marmalade for me), and here is Flora Thompson describing toast with salt butter and celery, and toast with cold boiled bacon. Toast-resistant though I am, she makes me long for that fresh hot toast and crisp celery, a wonderful combination, and how subtle:
‘In winter, salt butter would be sent for and toast would be made and eaten with celery. Toast was a favourite dish for family consumption. “I’ve made ’em a stack o’ toast as high as up to their knees,” a mother would say on a winter Sunday afternoon before her hungry brood came in from church. Another dish upon which they prided themselves was thin slices of cold, boiled streaky bacon on toast, a dish so delicious that it deserves to be more widely popular.’
—from English Bread and Yeast Cookery, 1977
MIMI SHERATON ON BIALYS
Mimi Sheraton, a former New York Times restaurant critic, traveled to the town of Bialystok, Poland, in search of the origin of the bialystoker kuchen, or, as it is now known in America, the bialy. So thoroughly was the Jewish community extinguished in this eastern Poland town that there was not even a trace of their famous bread, and it was suggested that it was a myth, that bialys did not come from Bialystok. But they did, and Sheraton persevered, and through the memory of Jews in communities throughout the world, she pieced together the bialy’s story.
—M.K.
As I began to receive bialy memoirs, I wanted to know more about how these humble onion rolls are made and how they evolved in the eighty or so years of their existence in New York and elsewhere around the United States. Danny Scheinin kindly let me hang around Kossar’s and take notes. In the winter of 1998 he sold the bakery to Juda Engelmayer and Danny Cohen, two energetic, thirty-something brothers-in-law, who still follow the traditional methods for baking bialys and also uphold the custom of a baker’s dozen that includes thirteen pieces.
I always love walking into Kossar’s, a wide, bright store that, in an old-fashioned way, is really a bakery with a small, makeshift sales counter. The air is veiled in flour, and the scent
of yeast, onions, and baking bread warmly engulfs visitors. Silent bakers in white T-shirts work with professional assurance, rolling, kneading, shaping, smearing on onions, and taking baked bialys from the oven. Passersby on Grand Street peer through the big front windows, and shoppers idle in and out, schmoozing, making purchases, and usually, buying one extra bialy to be eaten out of hand.
Danny Scheinin explained that too often in the United States today, bialys and bagels are made in the same bakeries, both from the same bagel dough. But a true bialy requires much more yeast than do bagels, so that it will rise quickly and its rim will be gently soft. Also, bialys are made without the malt or sugar that is added to bagels to produce a golden crust, and unlike bagels, they are not boiled before being baked. (If authentic bialy bakeries sell bagels, they usually buy them from a bagel baker.)
For the most part, good bialys come from dedicated bialy bakeries, where the only other products are different shapes of bialy dough, such as bulkas—long, oval rolls topped with onions or garlic and poppy seeds—and pletzls that are ten-to-twelve-inch flat rounds, liberally sprinkled with poppy seeds and onions.
Kossar’s bialy dough is made authentically with only four ingredients: high-gluten flour, salt, ice water, and bakers’ yeast. Forget about sugar, eggs, or oil, all of which are recommended in various cookbooks. Kossar’s recipe for a dough batch that makes seventy to eighty dozen bialys, includes 100 pounds of high-gluten flour, 7 gallons of ice water, 2 pounds of salt, and about 1 pound of yeast, depending on the weather, more yeast being necessary on colder days. Until early 2000, the mixing and shaping went as follows: These ingredients were quickly, briefly combined in a huge commercial electric mixer and allowed to rise in the mixer bowl for two to three hours, or until the dough began to come together but was still very sticky. The dough was then turned out on a lightly floured board and divided into about nine 6-pound mounds. Each was kneaded by hand, that step being impossible with older machines because the dough was so sticky.
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