Tea-Rolls.
After mixing your bread in the morning either with sponge or with yeast, divide the kneaded dough into two portions. Mould one into a round ball, and set aside for a loaf as already directed. Make a hole in the middle of the other batch and pour into it a tablespoonful of butter, just melted, but not hot. Close the dough over it, dust your hands and kneading-board with flour and work in the shortening until the dough is elastic and ceases to be sticky. Put it into a floured bowl, cover with a cloth and set away out of draught and undue heat, for three hours. Knead it again, then, and wait upon its rising for another three hours. The dough should be as soft as can be handled.
When it is light for the second time flour your board, rubbing in the flour and blowing lightly away what does not adhere to the surface. Toss the lump dough upon it and knead thoroughly for five minutes. Flour a rolling-pin and roll the dough into a sheet not more than half an inch thick. Cut this into round cakes with a biscuit-cutter or a sharp-edged tumbler and fold, not quite in the middle, in the form of turnovers, pinching the corners of the fold pretty hard to hinder the flap of dough from flying up as the rising proceeds. Rub the bottom and sides of a baking-pan with sweet lard or butter. Do this with a bit of clean soft rag or tissue-paper, visiting every corner of the pan, but not leaving thick layers and streaks of grease after it. Arrange the rolls in regular rows in the pan about a quarter of an inch apart.
Cover with a cloth and set nearer the fire than you dared trust the dough, and let them rise for an hour. Peep under the cloth two or three times to see whether they rise evenly, and turn the pan around once that all may be equally exposed to the heat.
When the time is up and the rolls are puffy and promising, set them in a pretty quick oven and bake half an hour, turning the pan once in this time, and covering with clean—never printed—paper, should they brown too fast. Break the rolls apart from one another and eat warm. They are also good cold, and if the directions be followed implicitly, very good always.