Where Did Parker House Rolls Come From?

The hotel

Harvey D. Parker arrived in Boston from a Maine farm in 1825 almost penniless and opened the Parker House hotel on October 8, 1855, Wikipedia's article on the hotel says. Today it is the Omni Parker House, and its page with Historic Hotels of America calls the hotel's restaurant the birthplace of the roll.

Who baked the first one

Nobody has a record. Wikipedia's article on the hotel says a German baker there created the rolls in the 1860s, while its article on the roll says the 1870s. Yankee magazine says they originated during the 1870s, and the hotel's own page says only that they were created on the property in the 19th century. The safest line: a baker at the Parker House, by the 1870s.

The best-known story says a hot-tempered baker threw a batch of unfinished rolls into the oven after an argument, and they came out folded. Yankee and Wikipedia both call it a legend, and the baker in it is never named.

From hotel secret to home kitchens

The oldest printed recipe Yankee knows of ran in the New Hampshire Sentinel in April 1874. The Historic Hotels of America page says the hotel kept its own recipe secret until 1933, when President Franklin Roosevelt asked for the rolls to be served at a White House dinner. The page also bills it as "America's first soft dinner roll," a nickname rather than something anyone can check.

Home cooks had versions long before 1933. Fannie Farmer's Boston Cooking-School Cook Book, first published in 1896, gives Parker House rolls: rounds of dough creased across the middle with a floured knife handle, buttered on one half and folded over.

Why the fold matters

The fold is the whole point. A brush of melted butter inside keeps the two layers from fusing, so each roll bakes with a lip and pulls apart in buttery layers. King Arthur Baking, whose recipe our Parker House rolls follow, folds strips of dough instead of circles because its bakers found the circles often popped open, and it adds potato flakes to keep the crumb soft.

The hotel's own published recipe folds small strips too, with the top half slightly overlapping the bottom. Bake them with our green bean casserole, the rest of our Thanksgiving sides and the whole Thanksgiving menu.

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