Friday, October 15, 2010


Here are the pictures as promised. Above is my breadmaker. It is showing the dough rising. Actually this is when it was finished rising. Below are the rolls rising again for another 30 minutes with a towel draped over them to keep the draft off of them.



Here is said towel. It is a flour sack cloth from Wal-mart. Very handy towels to have around. I've used them for drying dishes, straining tea when making hot tea from loose herbs, and for wiping dirty faces and hands while eating. I do have 4 kids around here.


And here they are finally done. Baby girl and I enjoyed ours after they cooled a bit with some organic strawberry jelly we saw at Costco. They were devine! And also the perfect size for Hubby's sandwiches at work.

I love how they connect and then tear apart. I know. The small things are what amuses me. I will share the recipe here. I saw it on the blog I shared the other day with you. Down-to-earth.

BREAD ROLLS RECIPE:

I'm making these again today to make sure of my amounts. I'm pretty sure this is what I used yesterday. I rarely use written recipes so this is just from my head. If there needs to be a change, I'll let you know later this morning.

Recipe for bread rolls in the bread machine
• 3½ cups bread flour - can be white, wholemeal, rye, grain - whatever. If you use a heavier flour you'll need to increase the amount of water used.
• 1 teaspoon salt. Please use good salt, not table salt. Even cooking salt is better than table salt.
• 1 tablespoon butter
Put all the above in your bread machine bucket.


In a teacup add and mix up:
• ¾ cup lukewarm water
• ½ tablespoon sugar
• 2 teaspoons yeast


• plus another cup of warm water - I can't tell you the exact amount of water you'll use. That will depend on your flour and the weather. Start with the 1¾ cups and you might have to add more.
Mix the ingredients in the cup and allow to stand for 5 minutes. You want your yeast to prove - it will look like this:



If the yeast doesn't froth up, it's dead and you'll have to buy new yeast. Always store your yeast in the fridge, it will keep longer. When the yeast is frothy and bubbling, add it to the dry mix, making sure all the sugar is either dissolved or added to the flour mix. Turn your machine on to the "dough" setting and let it mix the dough.
When it's finished, remove the dough and roll it into a long cigar shape - about 12 inches long. Cut into about 8 pieces for large rolls or 12 pieces for small rolls. Take each piece of dough and work it with your hands into a nice round ball. Place all the balls on a baking tray, add seeds, polenta or a criss-cross and allow to rise for about 30 minutes - depending on the temperature in your house. If you can put them in the sun they'll only take about 10 minutes to rise.
Turn on your oven so it's hot when you put the rolls in. Bread has two types of rising - one is from the yeast you use, the other is called "oven lift" - you get this when you put properly proved bread dough into a HOT oven. The heat immediately starts to lift the bread. That, my friends is what you want. Adding dough to a warm oven won't give you the same result.
Good luck with your rolls, everyone.
OOPS - ruralinspirations has just reminded me I didn't tell you about the temp for baking these rolls. As I said, put the rolls into a HOT oven (that is one that has been sitting on at least 200C for about 10 minutes). Then cook on 200C (395F) until they're golden brown and you can smell baked bread.
YET ANOTHER UPDATE...
I tested the above recipe and everything is fine. Just monitor the water yourselves as it's always a bit different. Pictured below are today's bread rolls, just out of the oven.


Happy baking everyone!


A wonderful blog. I'm still reading through the past posts. I have yet to reach the beginning.

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