Bulkie roll

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A bulkie roll or bulkie is a New England regional variety of sandwich roll. Sandwiches made with bulkie rolls are very common in area delicatessens, restaurants, and institutional food services. Bulkie rolls are larger and firmer than hamburger buns. The crust is usually slightly crisp or crunchy, but bulkies are not hard rolls. The bread within the roll is similar to ordinary white bread; with a texture that is neither very chewy nor very fluffy; without any yellow color or egg taste; and not noticeably sweet. Bulkie rolls are not topped with seeds.

They are similar to and sometimes equated with kaiser rolls^[1], but kaiser rolls are noticeably sweeter and often topped with poppy seeds.

[edit] Origin and usage

There is no well-known explanation of the name. Bulkie rolls are not particularly large, somewhat larger than a kaiser roll^[2] The name is almost always spelled "bulkie," not "bulky." The name is not usually capitalized when it appears in an ordinary sentence. One plausible suggestion is that it is derived from the Polish word bułka (plural bułki), a generic word for a bread roll.^[3] (In Polish, the letter k can be followed by i, but never by y. Hence, "bulki," and not "bulky.")

Examples of menu usage include:

"Two of our handcrafted seafood cakes on a bulkie with lettuce and tomato"
"Roast Beef Bulkie"
"Fried or Char-grilled Chicken Breast Sandwich on Bulkie Roll"
"Vegetarian Burger on a Bulkie Roll"
"'Piled High' Served on your choice of white, rye, or pumpernickel bread—bulkie or onion roll"

Boston writer Alan Lupo recalls that in the 1940s "in the mornings, my mother ate a bulkie roll and drank a cup of coffee while reading the Boston Post."

Lee Shai Weissbach writes of a Manchester, New Hampshire Jewish grocery store, pre-World-War-II, whose owner was "affectionately remembered for 'the barrel of pickles and the hefty corned-beef sandwiches on bulkie rolls that he dispensed."^[4]

[edit] Notes

^ Emily Chasan, 2004, Tufts University: Off the Record; College Prowler; ISBN 1-59658-135-2: "Local slang: Bulkie Roll, a Kaiser roll for a sandwich"
^ one bulkie recipe calls for 4 cups of flour and yields 12 rolls, or 3 oz. flour per roll; for comparison, one Kaiser roll recipe calls for 2 cups of flour and yields 8 rolls, or 2 oz. flour per roll.
^ Polish-language site showing a variety of bułki, computerized Polish-English translator which renders bułka as bread roll
^ Lee Shai Weissbach, 2005, "Jewish Life in Small-Town America : A History", Yale University Press, ISBN 0-300-10671-8, p. 265