The history of morning rolls, including a recipe for making your own | Scotsman Food and Drink (2024)
In every newsagents, corner shop and petrol station across Glasgow (and elsewhere across Scotland) you will find freshlybaked crispy morning rolls, probably piled up on top of a misused ice cream freezer.
McGhee’s bakery, one of the biggest producers of these rolls, sells over a staggering twomillion every week. So this is a bread produced on a massive industrial scale.
McGhee’s infact produce this crispy roll specifically for the Glasgow market; elsewhere in Scotland theirrecipes for morning rolls differ.
Glasgow morning rolls are very light and airy, and very, very crispy on the outside. Whathelps to make them so crispy is the crumby coating they are given; this is actually ricecones, a rough textured rice flour.
The likes of Morton’s rolls are cut by hand producing oddshapes, which makes them all the more charming. They are often very well fired, and this ishow some people prefer them.
Some of them are so black visitors to the city must wonderwhy they are on sale as it looks like someone has made a co*ck up.
They are also baked sothey touch each other, forming a kissing crust.
When you tug the rolls apart there is a weesoft titbit inside that you can nibble on.
These morning rolls are central to life in Glasgow and other parts of Scotland. They are eaten at breakfast or made intosandwiches for a packed lunch.
Morning rolls must be eaten fresh as they go into rigourmortis by the end of the day.
They are essential for the ‘hot filled rolls’ served at almostevery café and snack van, filled with the usual suspects of square sausage, or bacon, orblack pudding, with a fried egg to make a doubler, and perhaps a potato scone.
It may notbe the healthiest thing in the world, but it is a wonderful and well loved tradition.
Another favourite way for kids to eat them is for a snack after school, squished down and spread withbutter so thick it leaves teethmarks.
After massively scaling down industrial quantities I have a recipe which is impressivelysimilar to the rolls you get in Glasgow.
I have always wondered how they get them so lightand airy and it turns out the answer is chemicals.
Michelin inspectors reveal their favourite dishes - and one is from a Scottish restaurant
Morning rolls often containsomething called IREKS Voltex, a multi-purpose bread improver that is used to iron out themillions of variable factors which can affect bread making.
If you produce two million rolls a week, you begin to understand why such a bakery wouldtake measures to ensure they provide a consistent product.
On the other hand the rolls atsome bakeries are batch fermented for up to 16 hours, meaning this bread has flavour; it isnot a bread that is ready within an hour from start to finish like some other mass producedbread.
This recipe is for all the people who are from Glasgow but now live somewhere else,and might happen to miss this great Glasgow institution.
You need to start these the night before you want to eat them, however they last well andtoast very well too.
Ingredients:
• 500g Canadian strong white bread flour (or a flour with a high gluten content, i.e. at least14 per cent)
• 30g lard or vegetable shortening
• 10g sugar
• 10g salt
• 5g fast action yeast
• 400ml cold water
For the Coating
• 50g plain flour
• 50g rice cones/flour
Method:
1Rub the fat into the flour in a large mixing bowl. Stir in the sugar, salt and yeast.
2Now pour inthe water and mix until it is all incorporated. This is a wet dough but when you are usingbread flour with such a high gluten content it can easily take that much water withoutbecoming sloppy.
3Remove the dough from the bowl and knead it for 1 minute until the dough has just becomesmooth with all the ingredients thoroughly combined.
4 With such a long ferment you don’tneed to knead it too much. Put the dough back into the bowl and cover loosely with clingfilm. Put the bowl in the refrigerator to leave it to ferment for 12 - 16 hours.
5 The next morning combine the rice cones and plain flour for the coating. Take a large bakingsheet and dust it liberally with the coating mixture (make sure to leave enough to coat therolls).
6Empty the dough on to a work surface which has been liberally dusted with therice/flour coating mixture. This is where a large silicone spatula or scraper is useful.
7 Nowusing a dough scraper divide the dough into 8 pieces. Don’t worry if it is sticky or messy asthese rolls aren’t supposed to look perfect.
8 Dust your fingers with the coating mixture and take each piece of dough, one at a time, anddip it into the coating mixture and place it on the baking sheet. They don’t need to be in theshape of a roll but try to keep in the air that is inside the dough.
9 Do this with each piece,placing them near to each other so that when they rise they will bake together. Despite thestickiness of this dough the coating mixture works wonders for stopping the dough fromsticking to everything. Leave them to rise for 1 - 2 hours or until doubled in size.
10 Bake in a 250˚C preheated oven on a high shelf for 15 - 20 minutes or until the tops aredark. The rolls should be well fired for the right flavour.
A history of the square sausage, including a recipe for making your own
A history of the Clootie Dumpling, including a recipe for making your own
The idea of a “morning” roll is equally old, and not that particularly Scottish in its heritage. These were simply the first items baked in the oven in the morning, they baked quicker than bread so were ready to go out for sale sooner.
The bread roll emerged out of the tradition of baking small bread loaves. These gradually became smaller and became known variously across Europe as a bap or a bun, and then simply as a roll or as a small bread (brötchen in Germany, brötli in Switzerland).
They were invented at the Parker House Hotel in Boston, during the 1870s. 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.
Scotch Morning Roll - Batch-baked bread roll, soft inside, crusty and chewy on top. Stottie cake – thick, flat, round loaf. Stotties are common in North East England. Sweet roll, also called a breakfast roll (chiefly US) – can refer to a variety of sweet, yeast-leavened breakfast breads or dessert foods.
The origins of roll forming began centuries ago, with various iterations developing over time. The oldest verified use of a simplified version of the roll forming process was in South Asia and the Middle East around 600 BCE.
La Farine, which opened in 1977 in Berkeley claims to have invented the morning bun. According to company lore, when the bakery's founder, Lili Lecocq, started out, she developed a particularly good croissant dough.
It has been argued that the breakfast roll became a national dish in Ireland during the Celtic Tiger economic boom of the 1990s and 2000s, becoming synonymous with "Breakfast Roll Man", the archetypal sub-contractor who was busy with construction work and needed sustenance on the move, before the bursting of the Irish ...
The first evidence of bread being baked dates back to approximately 10000 BC. Sourdough bread was discovered by the Egyptians in 6000 BC. Apparently the use of fermentation to make bread rise was discovered by accident, when someone left some dough in the sun and it rose.
The oldest evidence of bread-making has been found in a 14,500-year-old Natufian site in Jordan's northeastern desert. Around 10,000 BC, with the dawn of the Neolithic age and the spread of agriculture, grains became the mainstay of making bread.
The longest continuously operating hotel in the United States, the Omni Parker House has been a Boston landmark since 1855. It has hosted every American president since Ulysses S. Grant, as well as meetings of the Saturday Club, whose literary members famously intertwined their history with that of the hotel's.
This could be a barm cake, bread-cake, bap, batch, bun, buttery, muffin, cob, oven bottom, roll or stotty. To add to the confusion, some names mean more than one thing. In the area north of Manchester, bread rolls are called 'teacakes'.
While there are countless variations on the theme, the basic breakfast roll consists of: two sausages, two rashers, one slice each of black and white pudding, and a runny fried egg (or two) all placed inside a crusty white french baguette that has, of course, been liberally and gloriously buttered.
A cob, a roll, a bun, a barm, a batch, a bap – it's just flour, yeast, salt, and water, but the country seems to be overflowing with different names for the humble morsel.
It has been argued that the breakfast roll became a national dish in Ireland during the Celtic Tiger economic boom of the 1990s and 2000s, becoming synonymous with "Breakfast Roll Man", the archetypal sub-contractor who was busy with construction work and needed sustenance on the move, before the bursting of the Irish ...
The Kaiser roll (Emperor roll, German: Kaiserbrötchen (German: [ˈkaɪ̯zɐˌbʁøːtçən]), Slovene: kajzerica, Polish: kajzerka, Hungarian: Császárzsemle), also called a Vienna roll (Wiener Kaisersemmel; as made by hand also: Handsemmel), or a hard roll, is a typically round bread roll, originally from Austria.
Baps hail from Scotland and are a staple of the region, a favored morning bun among the Scottish. The first recorded history of the use of the word bap is believed to be in the 1500s, so baps have certainly been a part of the culinary lexicon for some time.
Introduction: My name is Gregorio Kreiger, I am a tender, brainy, enthusiastic, combative, agreeable, gentle, gentle person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
We notice you're using an ad blocker
Without advertising income, we can't keep making this site awesome for you.
