A Parker House roll is a

bread roll Bread is a staple food prepared from a dough of flour (usually wheat) and water, usually by baking. Throughout recorded history and around the world, it has been an important part of many cultures' diet. It is one of the oldest human-made foo ...

made by flattening the center of a ball of dough with a

rolling pin Rolling is a type of motion that combines rotation (commonly, of an axially symmetric object) and translation of that object with respect to a surface (either one or the other moves), such that, if ideal conditions exist, the two are in contact ...

so that it becomes an oval shape and then folding the oval in half. They are made with milk and are generally quite buttery, soft, and slightly sweet with a crispy shell. They were invented at the

Parker House Hotel Parker may refer to: Persons * Parker (given name) * Parker (surname) Places Place names in the United States *Parker, Arizona *Parker, Colorado * Parker, Florida * Parker, Idaho * Parker, Kansas * Parker, Missouri * Parker, North Carolina *Park ...

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

, during the 1870s.

Fannie Farmer Fannie Merritt Farmer (23 March 1857 – 16 January 1915) was an American culinary expert whose ''Boston Cooking-School Cook Book'' became a widely used culinary text. Education Fannie Farmer was born on 23 March 1857 in Boston, Massachusetts, ...

gives a recipe for them in her 1896

Boston Cooking-School Cook Book The ''Boston Cooking-School Cook Book'' (1896) by Fannie Farmer is a 19th-century general reference cookbook which is still available both in reprint and in updated form. It was particularly notable for a more rigorous approach to recipe writing ...

. The story of their creation has several variations, but they all involve an angry pastry cook throwing unfinished rolls into the oven, which results in their dented appearance. The recipe for Parker House Rolls first started appearing in cookbooks in the 1880s.Smith, Andrew F, ed. Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America. New York:Oxford University Press, 2004, Volume 1

References

* Forbes, Esther, and Arthur Griffin. ''The Boston Book.'' Houghton Mifflin Company: 1947. * Morrisey, Louise Lane, and Marion Lane Sweeney. ''An Odd Volume of Cookery.'' Houghton Mifflin Company: 1949.

External links

Omni Parker House recipe on FoodNetwork.com 1873 reference for the name
Yeast breads New England cuisine American breads {{bread-stub

See also

References

External links