Butter Roll

 After Christmas in 1970 I drove to Tallahassee to see Sheila Matthews and meet her family. It was with fear and trembling. For those who know our story, you know that by that time, though nothing was official, we'd each pretty much decided that if the other would agree, we'd spend our lives together. Now I was to officially meet her family.  

I remember wondering as I drove out Buck Lake Road how many times I'd make that drive over the years. There were no guarantees at that point, but I was sure hoping it would be often during many years.

I didn't know it at the time, but Jay and Mavis Matthews had bought a new set of twin beds for Jimmy's bedroom so there would be a place for me to sleep. 

Mrs. Matthews greeted me warmly and Jay, well Jay was Jay. He scared me. But I don't think he really meant to. He was jsut a man of few words.

What a place they had there on Highland Avenue, a sand road that was scraped regularly. Four acres of big oak trees dripping with Spanish moss, and lots of gigantic azalea bushes. Loquat trees and kumquat bushes. A big well-tended garden. And a small, cozy house.

I had been invited to come for the last day of the year for a special reason -- a reason that would bring us back for NewYear's Eve every year for another decade plus. New Year's Eve was Annie Bell Brannon Snell's birthday. 

Lillie Murphy Brannon and Annie Belle Brannon Snell (r)

Three "Granny"s: Sheila (standing), her mother Mavis Snell Matthews,
and Mavis's mother , Annie Brannon Snell.

Annie Belle Brannon Snell - Sheila's maternal grandmother.

What a wonderful woman. She was in the last half of her eighties that last day of 1970. She had grown up on farms along the line between Dale and Henry counties in southern Alabama. She and Albert had raised their five daughters in an unpainted house they built with their own hands on a parcel of Albert's Daddy's farm. Her descendants, spouses, and other kin gathered every year in Quincey, Florida for that occasion and the food is fantastic. It would not be an Annie-Albert Reunion without butter roll.

The house that Albert Snell built on the Snell farm.

Now, of course, there on the farm they usually had plenty of butter and lard and milk, and kept a good store of flour and sugar. And those facts made butter rolls an easy dessert. Annie had even had her butter roll recipe in the newspaper a while back. 

But on December 31, 1970 butter roll was a whole new world for me and yet very reminiscent of something from my distant past. I don't remember if Granny (as we called Annie Snell) made that first one or if maybe Ethel or Sue made it. But oh I loved it -- almost as much as I loved that whole welcoming family. Granny and her daughters and Sheila's cousins and their kids just accepted me as part of things from that first day. I knew this was a family and a loving culture that I would like to be part of. And, oh, that butter roll!

My mouth is watering while I write this. It has been a looonnnnnng time since I have had butter roll.

I got worried 25 years ago or more that the tradition of butter roll was gonna get lost to newer generations so I persuaded Sue and Mavis and others to help me learn to make it. As an old country recipe, no one really had specific amounts of ingredients. But I managed to make some pretty doggone good ones for a church covered dish and for a Baird family reunion, and maybe one or two other occasions. 

Suzan Redmon, Sheila's first cousin, is the real family butter roll expert these days.

Ingredients:

Baking powder        Flour       Water       Oil        Milk

Butter       Sugar      Vanilla flavoring

• Clean your hands in the Mama Baird fashion*.
• Mix a teaspoon or so** of baking powder with a couple of cups or more of flour.
• Mix equal parts of water, oil, and milk to make about** a cup of liquid.
• Soften three sticks of butter and blend it into one and a half cups of sugar.
• Sift the flour into a bread bowl.
• Pour the liquid into a depression in the flour and mix the dough with your very clean fingers.
• Pinch the dough into three equal balls.
• Roll each ball thin and cut into approximate quarters.
• put a lump**of the sweetened butter in the center of each piece of dough and wrap it into a slightly flattened golf ball sized roll.
• Arrange the rolls loosely into a baking dish.
• Bake at 450 degrees until browned.
• Add two cups or so of water to any left-over sweetened butter to make a syrup and add half a teaspoon of vanilla flavoring then bring to boiling, .
• Pour the syrup over the rolls.

If you just happen to have some blackberries or other fruit, or pecans, or some other sort of special flavoring around it is acceptable to add it, but plain ol' butter roll just can't be beat. They are very rich and delicious and made from simple ingredients that every farm usually had in the first half of the twentieth century in South Alabama.

A year or so after Betty and James Sanders moved to Atlanta from our church at Trinity where James was our pastor for six years, my Mother got a call.  Betty asked her for the recipe for "those apple rolls" that Terrell made for church dinners at Trinity. It's amazing how many folks are convinced that plain ol' butter roll has apples in it. Nope. 

* my Mama Baird always said cooks should wash their hands as if they were preparing for surgery before kneading dough or other hands-on cooking tasks.

**The terms "or so",  "about", and "lump" are oft-used instructions in country cooking I've found.