Milk Line Rolls - Part 1

Recipe development notes, photo by Andrea Sexton Dumas

In early November 2021, as I planned the Autumn Harvest Dinner we hosted for my in-laws, I remembered Gran’s rolls.  

Gran is my Aunt Margaret’s mother-in-law, Uncle Ed’s mom. She didn’t have to be my grandmother to call her Gran; that’s what everyone called her, at least everyone young enough to be her grandchild. There’s a particular level of deference in our culture and speaking an elder’s title is one of those considerations. I hadn’t spent much time with Gran, but I remember the gap in her teeth, her high pitched voice and her rolls.  If she was coming to one of our family gatherings, my own Grandmother would request rolls and nothing else.  They say she was excellent in the kitchen, but I’d only had her rolls.  Gran made them small, and they were easy to eat.  They were buttery and light and there was never enough of them.  

I haven’t eaten them in at least 20 years, but they were so memorable that every so often my sister and I would muse, “do you think anyone has the recipe?” 

“Maybe Auntie so-and-so.”  

I began searching the internet based only on my memory of what Gran’s rolls looked like.  I made a chart of ingredients and measurements.  

By Tuesday night, I was in regular contact with my Sister, Danielle, and The Aunties: my dad’s sister Aunt Margaret and two of her daughters, Linda and Barbara - phone, text, apps - trying to reconstruct Gran’s recipe. Linda and Barbara are technically my first cousins, but again, deference. Auntie Barbara is Danielle’s mom, which makes Danielle my second cousin. Sometimes bloodlines are just a suggestion; she’s my sister.

“No, no, there wasn’t any brown sugar.”

“I don’t think she used butter flavored shortening; I think it was just butter.”

“Was it water or milk?”

“Was there any sugar at all?”

“Your auntie said she let them rise three times, and then cut them out with a mason jar lid.”

“I sent you a picture from a website.  They kinda looked like that.”

“No, definitely no honey.”

“She did a butter wash before baking them, not an egg wash.”

“What about after?”

“She’d keep the oven on while she made them, and would rise them on top of the stove.”

“Gold Medal flour, not bread flour.”

“You know her death anniversary is later this month.”

I don’t remember when Gran died; it must have been when I was away at college or maybe out of state working.  Maybe I was just too self-involved at the time.  Uncle Ed’s birthday would be next week, the same day Uncle Ernest died nearly ten years ago now.  Uncle Ed died two years ago, but in March. In our family we save obituaries religiously; I actually inherited a greeting card organizer from my dad’s other sister Auntie Ophelia, where she started recording everyone's birthdays and death days. She bought it just before she died so it's incomplete. I added Gran’s name to the November anniversaries.

After picking apart internet recipes from other people’s southern grandmas, we had a skeleton of a recipe. We were all juiced, but perhaps no one more than me.