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SHAPES

Part of the charm of rolls is that you can use your imagination to make fanciful shapes that delight the eye. On the following pages we have sketched some classic shapes that work well—that is, they are simple to do, bake evenly and look beautiful.

At the other end of the spectrum, quite a few connoisseurs hold that for sheer eating quality, the plain cushion-shaped roll, whose soft sides have been supported by its neighbors’, is the very best: and plenty pretty, at that.

PROOFING

The last secret for making your rolls featherlight is to allow plenty of time for the final rise after shaping. We would go so far as to say that rolls should be slightly overproofed, so long as the dough has not gotten old already from too much rising in earlier stages, or too much time spent in the shaping.

CRUSTS

Whatever the shape, if you want the crust to glow with a soft luster, brush the tops of the rolls with melted butter after baking. For a shinier finish, brush with bun wash: one egg beaten lightly with the amount of water it takes to fill half of its shell. Brush on immediately before baking, or just when the rolls come out of the oven; their heat will cook the egg and the surface will glisten. (The egg does tend to slide down and burn on the cookie sheet.) For shine and softness, wash before baking, and brush with butter after.

Use a soft brush, a feather brush, or a fringed napkin for glazing unbaked dough; a stiff brush can undo all your good work by squashing the airy delicacies at their weakest moment. And please, if you are going to go to the trouble, take care to cover the whole exposed surface evenly. A messy washing doesn’t make any big improvement in the rolls’ appearance. Butter looks best, incidentally, if the coating is thin.

Best Soft Dinner Rolls

One recipe of Buttermilk Bread will make two 9″ 13″ pans of terrific rolls—either 12 or 15 rolls to the pan, or as many cloverleaf, bowknot, palmleaf, swirl, fan-tan, etc, rolls, on a baking sheet.

For best flavor, start the dough cool, gradually warming it from rise to proof. Mix a 70°F dough; first rise slow, 70°F; second rise, 80°F; proof 90–95°F, for example. If you follow this pattern, the first rise will take about 2 ½ hours; the second, about an hour, or a little more, and the proof, about 45 minutes. However you schedule your risings, though—fast, slow, or accelerating—be careful not to let the dough rise longer than it needs to (not so long that it sighs when you poke it after each rising), because shaping rolls takes extra time, and you don’t want to spoil the flavor by letting the dough get old.

SHAPING CUSHION STYLE PAN ROLLS

Flour the board lightly. Flatten the dough and divide it in two or three pieces, rounding each one. Let them relax, covered, to protect them from drafts. Uncover one round and press it flat. Divide into three even parts, cover two, and then make four or five rounds out of each piece.

Try to keep the smooth gluten film intact on each roll. Sprinkle the greased pan with sesame or poppy seeds if you wish, and then place the rounds in the pan. The rolls should be no more than ½ inch apart. They will move closer as they rise, finally supporting each other and making the pale, soft sides characteristic of dinner rolls of this type. The object now is to have them just the right distance apart so that the risen roll is a nicely domed cube when it is finished rising and baking. Placed too close together, the rolls will be tall and narrow, and probably hard to separate. If they are too far apart, their sides won’t rise together, and the rolls will be flattish and crusty. When you make larger rolls, they will do best spaced slightly farther apart; for smaller rolls, place them closer together. Smaller rolls, since they don’t rise as much, take proportionately more pan space. Nine large rolls fill an 8″ 8″ inch pan with one loaf’s worth of dough; fifteen smaller ones are just right in a 9″ 13″ pan, from the same amount of dough. For other shapes,