Two Hour Rolls: They really live up to the name!

We had a bread emergency.

Woman's Club of Fort Worth Cook Book, 1928

Two Hour Rolls 1 cake or envelope yeast ½ cup warm water 2 tbsp sugar ½ cup milk 2 tbsp shortening 3 cups flour 1 tsp salt Dissolve the yeast in the warm water to make sure it foams to life. Set aside. Scald the milk, remove from heat.* Then add the shortening and stir until melted. Pour into a large mixing bowl and allow to cool until it won't kill the yeast. Mix the yeast and the milk. Then sift in half the flour. Beat until smooth. Sift in the salt and remaining flour. Beat well; do not knead. Roll out to ¼- to ½- inch thickness. Cut with a biscuit cutter. Set on a greased baking pan. Allow to rise one hour. Heat oven to 375°. Bake the rolls 20 minutes, or until nicely browned. *We recommend pouring the milk into a large mug, and then scalding it in the microwave. All you have to do is let the milk cook in the microwave until it bubbles around the edges. Mrs. Bryant Nowlin, Woman's Club of Fort Worth Cook Book, 1928

I had promised I would make rolls. However, the bread dough never rose. It's like the yeast all died as soon as I mixed it in. After an hour of waiting, during which the dough didn't even get slightly puffy, I dropped it in the trash. It landed with a very final-sounding thud. This brings us to Mrs. Bryant Nowlin, whose recipe claims that I can make yeast rolls in two hours. 

I would like to note that this all the recipes on this page are for bread made as quickly as possible without using baking powder.

Woman's Club of Fort Worth Cook Book, 1928

I love how utilitarian this recipe sounds. These days, yeast bread is a special and loving undertaking, but in the late 1920s it was still just "how we make bread." And so, if you just wanted bread quick but didn't trust those newfangled baking powders, you could (hopefully) get yeast-raised bread at the last minute.

At any rate, we set the yeast in a little glass of warm water to bring it to life and then went about the business of scalding the milk. I know Mrs. Bryant Nowlin says to use shortening, and I'm sure most sensible ladies of the time would agree that it's more scientific and pure. But we at A Book of Cookrye have been obsessively saving beef fat with no plans for its use. Also, beef fat just makes really good bread.

Meanwhile, the yeast had shown some hesitation at first. I began to wonder if it was dead. But after a few uncertain minutes, it finally foamed and fizzed to life. This is why you always test your yeast before you dare proceed with the recipe!

Having confirmed that all our microscopic friends were ready to raise the bread, we could proceed with our second attempt at the staff of life* in one night.

Mrs. Bryant Nowlin defies all bread convention by expressly telling us not to knead. Also, we are instructed to omit the entire business of letting the dough rise, punching it down, and letting it rise again. Instead, we skip right to the part where you shape the dough into rolls barely after mixing it. Well, the recipe title promised us two-hour rolls, not half-a-day rolls. You don't get that by carefully incubating the dough all day.

On the other hand, I can barely imagine trying to shape the dough into rolls when it still looks like this.

To my surprise, the dough handled surprisingly well. I thought it would crumble and rip into pieces, but instead it rolled out without tearing.

Because I have my doubts when someone tries to put yeast on a tight schedule, I set a timer for precisely sixty minutes as directed in the recipe to see if I could trust the directions. Sure enough, our rolls had risen into perfect little poufs.

Incredibly, our two-hour rolls were ready two minutes early! That's right, from start to finish, we only needed one hour and 58 minutes to turn raw ingredients into delicious bread. I've never had yeast bread this quick before. Yeast bread is almost always something you plan the day before (if not earlier), not something you just whip up for the heck of it. 

I'm usually suspicious of recipes where the selling point is speed. Usually, they're adequate if you're hungry but a bit disappointing. However, the two hour rolls were unexpectedly good. I thought they'd be bland since we didn't give the yeast a whole day to do its yeasty business, but they were flavorful anyway. Mrs. Bryant Nowlin definitely knew what she was doing.

While it's true that these aren't as good as Elizabeth's Rolls, they're still pretty good. I don't just mean "they'll do in a pinch," these are just really delicious bread. The entire pan disappeared before I had a chance to make croutons out of the stale leftovers. They didn't even have time to go stale.

*Did you know the phrase is "Bread is the staff of life?" I always thought it was "Bread is the stuff of life." Clearly there is an archaic definition of "staff" that I don't know about. ↪