Dinner Rolls for Christmas Eve

Our amazing dinner rolls for our traditional Christmas Eve dinner came from Beth Hensperger's The Bread Bible. Here are the ingredients:

1 T active dry yeast
1 tiny whisk dipped in honey
1/4 cup warm water
1 cup warm buttermilk
2 T honey
grated zest of one lemon
4 T unsalted butter, melted
1 large egg
2 tsp salt
4 - 4 1/2 cups unbleached flour

Soften the yeast in warm water. Stir it into the warm water with a tiny whisk dipped in honey.

Heat the buttermilk to warm. Add the sugar (the original recipe calls for sugar; I use honey), the lemon zest, the butter, melted, the egg, and the salt.

Add some flour and the yeast and beat well. Then gradually (1/2 cup at a time) add the rest of the flour.

Knead the dough until smooth and elastic. Put the dough in a greased bowl to rise until doubled.

I baked these rolls in two greased cake pans. I always melt about a half a stick of butter.



Punch the dough down gently. Divide it in half (1/2 for each cake pan). Then divide each half into 9 equal portions. Shape each into a ball. Dip the ball in the melted butter and put it into the cake pan.

Preheat the oven to 375. When the rolls have risen, place in the center of the oven and bake for 15 - 20 minutes until golden brown. Turn out of the pans and serve.

Canadian Buttermilk Honey Rolls

Today I was supposed to bake Reinhart's white bread from The Bread Baker's Apprentice. All of his breads call for instant yeast and I always use active dry yeast, so I'm doing his white bread (Version 2) tomorrow after I purchase some instant yeast!

In the meantime my beekeeper's club has its annual picnic and auction on Sunday. I promised to bring some baked goods to auction in addition to some bigger items that I've donated. I always try to make something that has honey in it. Tonight I baked Canadian Buttermilk Honey Rolls - they are absolutely luscious - I've made them many times.

The recipe is from the Book of Bread by Judith and Evan Jones. It's only available used, so I'm giving you the ingredients.

2 cups buttermilk
1 T active dry yeast
2 T honey
2 tsp coarse salt
2 T butter
1/4 tsp baking soda
4 - 5 cups white flour, unbleached.

Interestingly, you get the buttermilk to a lukewarm temperature and soften the yeast in 1/3 of it.



The butter, salt and honey are stirred into the rest of the warm buttermilk. Then you add the soda. Soda is usually added to baked goods with sour cream, buttermilk or sourdough to do the chemical process to allow the bread to brown.

When you've mixed all that together, you begin to add the flour, a cup at a time. I ended with the dough hook and finished kneading on the counter. You press the dough into a flattened shape, about 3/4 inch thick.

I then do what my mother always does to rolls. I cut them out with a biscuit cutter and dip each roll in melted butter before putting it into a cake pan to rise. I love the soft sides of rolls baked this way, rather than sitting individually on a cookie sheet.

These rolls only rise once - in the pan. This means the recipe can be done start to finish in 1 1/2 hours.


They bake in a preheated 400 degree oven for 20 minutes.

Here are the finished rolls. I'll package them in Ziploc baggies and offer each dozen as a separate item at the beekeeper's auction.
I kept the small pan of rolls for me at home.

Norwegian Rye Bread

Dylan and I seem to be on a rye bread kick lately. So today we made Norwegian Rye Bread from A World of Breads by Doris Casella.



2 packages yeast
1/3 cup warm water
2 cups buttermilk
1 1/2 tsp salt
2/3 cup molasses
2 T caraway seed
1/3 cup butter, melted
2 cups white flour
2 cups rye flour
2 cups whole wheat flour

With those ingredients, I'm sure you can imagine that this is a dark bread.

• Dissolve the yeast in the water.
  
• Heat the buttermilk (I put it in the microwave for 30 seconds).
  
• Add salt, molasses, caraway seed, melted butter and dissolved yeast to the buttermilk.
  
• Blend these ingredients and then start stirring in the flours gradually.
  
• Knead the bread until it is smooth and elastic.
  
• Place in buttered bowl to rise. Takes about 1 1/2 hours.

• When the dough is doubled, turn it out onto a floured board.
  
• Divide it into 2 parts. Shape each into a loaf and place in a buttered loaf pan.
  
• Cover and let rise until doubled again - about 1 1/4 hours.
  
• Brush the top of the loaf with melted butter.
  
• Bake in a 325 oven for 45 minutes until done.

It's beautiful and tastes rich and delicious.

The Best Waffles Ever!

The best waffles ever are in the King Arthur Flour 200th Anniversary Cookbook - this book is chock full of great bread recipes, but my favorite pancakes/waffles are in the early part of the book. The recipe makes a large quantity, but halving it, which I do all the time, easily feeds four people.

Here it is (already halved for you):

2 cups King Arthur (naturally) Unbleached all-purpose flour
2 T sugar
3/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
2 large eggs
2 cups buttermilk
1/4 stick butter, melted

• Mix the dry ingredients together thoroughly
• In another bowl, beat the buttermilk and eggs together until light
• Add the melted butter
• Blend only until the dry ingredients are mixed in - only 20 seconds or so
  

Cook on a preheated waffle griddle (or pancake griddle if you are making pancakes).



I use a 1/4 cup measuring cup to put the batter on the griddle for each waffle.


My well-used (and thus not lovely) waffle baker with the batter on it.

The finished waffles and the cookbook.


My grandson, Dylan, the best waffle eater in the world!

Seven Grain Honey Bread

Today Dylan and I baked another of my favorite Hensperger recipes from my falling-apart-at-the-seams copy of her Baking Bread: Old and New Traditions.
The recipe calls for seven grain cereal and I only had five grain but I used it and hoped for the best.

Here are the ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups boiling water
• 1 cup seven grain cereal (I used five-grain cereal)
• 1 1/2 T active dry yeast
• pinch sugar
• 1/4 cup warm water
• 1/4 cup warm buttermilk
• 1/3 cup local honey (as a beekeeper, I was thrilled to use my own honey from my backyard bees)
• 3 T corn or other vegetable oil
• 2 T unsalted butter, melted
• 3 eggs (we were almost out of eggs and had only two but I soldiered on)
• 1 T salt
• 4 1/2 - 5 cups unbleached bread flour.

And here's what you do:

• Pour boiling water over the cereal and allow to stand for 1 hour
• Proof the yeast in the warm water with the pinch of sugar (about 10 minutes)
• In a large bowl, combine the buttermilk, honey, oil, butter, eggs, salt, and 1 cup flour.
• Beat hard until smooth
• Add the cereal mixture and the yeast
• Add remaining flour, 1/2 cup at a time until the dough clears the sides of the bowl.
• Knead the dough until it is soft and springy (about 3 minutes), adding flour as necessary
• Let rise in a greased bowl covered with plastic wrap for about 1 t0 1 1/4 hours
• Turn dough onto work surface and divide into three parts.
• Make round loaves - I have round baking pans - they are actually called pudding pans - and I used those
• Let rise about 30 to 40 minutes
• About 20 minutes before baking, preheat the oven to 375.
• Bake until golden brown and hollow sounding when tapped about 35 - 40 minutes.

Dylan's favorite part is licking the beater!

Here are the three loaves. I'm lucky they came out at all. I had baked rolls in my convection oven at 375 and thought it was still on when I put the loaves in the oven, but actually I had turned it off.

When the timer went off for me to take the bread out, I realized the oven wasn't even on, the bread was pale blonde and although it had achieved "spring" in the oven, it wasn't done in any way. I left the bread in the oven, turned the convection back on at 375 and baked it for another 20 minutes.

Despite the rocky baking experience and the lack of one egg, the loaves turned out pretty. They are a little softer than I would have imagined and the loaf on the left in the group picture shows the indentation from the cooling rack.

Fantail Rolls - Part Two

Although I used a pizza wheel to cut the strips, I used a bread knife to cut the stacked strips into six rolls.
Then you turn the strip stack on its side and put each one in a muffin cup.



After you've done the first six, then you make the second half of the dough into six rolls.

Here they all are - I've fooled with this picture and can't get it to rotate to the right perspective without changing the rotation on all the others in this post - forgive its sideways orientation! The recipe says to fan the rolls out in the muffin cups before rising.



These rise again covered with a kitchen towel (not terry cloth) for about 1 to 1 1/2 hours. Bake the rolls in a 375 degree oven for 20 - 25 minutes. Then brush the tops with the remaining 2 T of butter and cool at least 20 minutes.

Well, these rolls taste great - I love the sour taste that goes with cooking with buttermilk or sourdough starter - but they fell apart. I don't know if I were too generous with the butter before cutting the dough into strips. However, my best guess is that you shouldn't separate the stacks fan-like when you put them into the muffin pans. The rolls that stayed together were not fanned before rising.

That's what I'd do if I were to make them again! On the cover of Gourmet, they show the rolls mostly on their sides - I think if they stood theirs up, they would fall apart too!

Buttermilk Fantails - Part One

In this month's roll feature in Gourmet, I also made the buttermilk fantail rolls on pg. 86. This was an interesting recipe to try.

Here are the ingredients:

1 stick plus 2 T unsalted butter, melted, divided
2 tsp active dry yeast
1/4 cup warm water
1 T honey
3 cups all purpose flour (I used bread flour)
1 1/2 tsp salt
3/4 cup well-shaken buttermilk

Butter muffin cups (12) with 1 T melted butter.
Stir together the yeast, warm water and honey in a large bowl and let stand until foamy about 5 minutes - if this doesn't happen start over with new yeast. (Again, as a beekeeper, it pleases me to find recipes that include honey.)
Mix flour, salt, buttermilk and 6 T melted butter into yeast mixture until a soft dough forms. Turn dough out onto well-floured surface and knead (I used the dough hook on my mixer) for 6 - 8 minutes
Put dough in large oiled bowl to rise, covered with plastic wrap and a kitchen towel - takes about 1 1/2 - 2 hours
Turn out dough and halve it. Cover the half you are not using with plastic wrap.

Roll dough out with a rolling pin into a 12 inch square about 1/8 inch thick. Brush dough with 1/2 T butter.


Cut dough into 6 strips - as you can see, I used a pizza wheel.



Mine weren't exactly equal, but it worked out anyway.


Stack the six strips, buttered side up, one on top of the other.



Continued on next post.