Birk Hall Rolls. (Mrs. Evans' quick way.)
This is for a breakfast party.
Ingredients required: 2 lbs. of finest flour to 1 oz. of fresh German yeast, a little pinch of salt, 1 oz. fresh butter melted into 1 pt. of warm, but not hot, milk. The dough should be much softer and slacker for rolls than for bread.
Take 1 oz. of German yeast and put it into 2 tablespoonfuls of cold water, leave it till dissolved. If the yeast is not fresh, add to it ½ a teaspoonful of sugar, but not if you can do without. Then strain it into a hole in the flour which you have ready in a basin, and pour over it about ¼ of a pt. of lukewarm milk. With a spoon give a stir round in the hole, and some flour will fall in. Stand it uncovered to rise 20 minutes before the fire, then add a pinch of salt and the rest of the pint of milk with the 1 oz. fresh butter melted in it. Add the milk gradually to the dough and mix all well. Let it again rise 10 minutes before shaping for the baking sheet, when it must be put to rise for a third time for 20 minutes or ½ an hour. (The rising takes about 1 hour altogether. First, 20 minutes; 2nd, 10 minutes; 3rd, 20 minutes). Bake in not too quick an oven.
N.B.—Should you use common yeast 2 tablespoonfuls will be enough, but it must be allowed 3 hours to rise instead of 1 hour. Time of baking varies according to the state of the oven and the size of the rolls.
This is also the mixture for Yorkshire cakes (see Tea Cakes, under Cakes).
Also for grissini rolled out ¼ yard long and thin as a pen (see Grissini); and for Breakfast Buns (see Cakes, &c.—Buns).