Bake Tom Colicchio’s Parker House Rolls for Thanksgiving
Tom Colicchio wrote a great article in the November issue of Saveur Magazine about the Parker House rolls they serve at his Colicchio and Sons restaurant in New York City. Parker House rolls are delicate, slightly sweet yeast rolls that melt in your mouth.
While the recipe is a rather simple milk enriched yeast roll, Colicchio adds a couple spins to the recipe.
While most recipes call for a small amount of sugar, we add malt syrup, a natural sweetener made from sprouted barley that I think tastes more interesting than plain sugar, lending caramel and molasses undertones to the flavor of the bread.
Bread Winner – Tom Colicchio
Colicchio also uses a cast iron skillet instead of the traditional pan for baking the rolls.
The main difference between classic Parker House rolls and the ones that I serve is the shape: most traditional recipes call for cutting the dough into rolls with a round or oval biscuit cutter and folding them in half like a taco; mine are formed into balls and baked in groups of six in cast-iron baking dishes.
The cast iron gets hot enough to give the rolls a good exterior crust, and clustering them prevents the bread from drying out. Since cast iron retains heat, it also keeps the rolls warm over the course of a meal—though if your Thanksgiving table is anything like ours, it’s unlikely that they’ll stick around that long.
Bread Winner – Tom Colicchio
Related articles
- Tom Colicchio Picks Up His Axe At Restaurant Opening (huffingtonpost.com)
- Riverpark, A Tom Colicchio Restaurant (gothamgal.com)
- Colicchio’s Tuesday Dinners Are Back (dinersjournal.blogs.nytimes.com)
- Gail Simmons on Top Chef: Just Desserts: “There’s a Lot of Strategy and Sabotage” (omg.yahoo.com)
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