This is a style of bread that we, fortunately, yet unfortunately, have lost. For some hundreds of years there was a dessert made by opening up a warm loaf or roll and pouring into it with sugar-sweetened melted butter flavored with rose water into the warm crumb, now irresistibly yummy.

The cultural question might be why this fabulous high caloric dessert lost favor with the public. The secret to a great desert is reducible to two word: fat and sugar. This bread is basically a rose butter cream frosting made into a pourable sauce. The difference being the butter sugar rose water for the bread and a frosting is how how treats the butter. For this dresser one melts the butter, adds sugar to taste, and then flavors with rose water, rather than whip up the butter with sugar that has been previously powered, and then flavor with rose water.

The bread in this recipe is a highly enriched yeasted loaf. Like the French gatteau de brioche, this is a bread that sits at the cusp of bread and cake.

The recipe as written. 15 egg yolks, and five standard spoonfuls of cream (probably roughly equal to a soup spoon which is usually equivalent with a 15 ml tablespoon) are mixed with enough yeast and flour to render the bread “well risen” by a fire in 15 minutes. The amount of flour is not specified, I think we can assume a bread with a soft open crumb to readily absorb the sweet butter sauce.

Here is the recipe in baker’s math followed by a version for 450 gram, roughly 1 pound of flour.

Ingredient	65% Hydration	70% Hydration	75% Hydration
Flour	450.00 g	450.00 g	450.00 g
Egg Yolks	8 yolks	8 yolks	9 yolks
Cream	2.5 tbsp	2.75 tbsp	3 tbsp
Water	116.02 g	124.94 g	133.87 g
Yeast	9.00 g	9.00 g	9.00 g

Ingredient	65% Hydration	70% Hydration	75% Hydration
Flour	100%	100%	100%
Egg Yolks	32%	32%	36%
Cream	9%	10%	11%
Water	24%	28%	28%
Yeast	2%	2%	2%
Total Liquid	65%	70%	75%

Form into rolls and bake in a slow oven. While we do not have an exact temperature for baking the “manchet” Carter mentions, it seems likely it was often baked in a very slow oven – the last bread —

The Carter recipe calls for one pound of butter for a recipe that works out to about twice what I am providing here. Thus, I’d make a butter sauce with half a pound, 225g butter, and then add sugar and rose water to your taste.

As Carter put it, “cut all the loaves open at the top, and pour butter into them, and serve them hot to table.” In our less formal times, I bring the rolls to the table and do the cutting and pouring right there.

If you make it, then le me know how you like it.