Wednesday, July 07, 2010

Dinner Rolls, perfect every time

These dinner rolls, loosely adapted from a Mark Bittman recipe, turn out rewardingly well every time I make them. Sure, you could go to Publix and pick up some of their delicious, in-house bakery-made French sourdough dinner rolls, but you could make these yourself, and they would be even better, fresh out of your own oven with a smear of butter and some honey. If you make them a little bigger than normal, they'd be great as hamburger rolls. This adaptation continues my love affair with whole wheat pastry flour, which really is amazing, since it can be used in almost all baking situations without weighing down your cookies/cakes/bread/etc, and yet it's healthy for you.

DINNER ROLLS

3 1/2 cups flour - combination of whole wheat pastry flour and white flour, in any proportions you like
1 Tblsp salt
1 Tblsp sugar
1 package instant yeast (about 2 tsp.)
3 Tblsp. cold butter
1 egg
1 cup milk

Put flour, salt, sugar, and yeast into food processor, pulse a few seconds. Add cold butter and egg, process 10 seconds. Keep machine running and pour the milk in. Run the machine for 30 seconds, or until dough starts to spin around in ball form. If it's too loose, add more flour, if too dry, a tablespoon or two more of milk. It should be a slightly sticky, easy-to-handle ball. Knead it for a minute. Place it in a greased bowl, cover with plastic wrap, let rise for 1.5 hours.

Take the dough out, deflate and reshape into a ball, let rest in bowl for another 15 minutes. Roll out until it's 1/2 inch thick, then cut out big circles with the top of a glass or a round cookie cutter. Place on baking tray. Preheat oven to 375. Brush tops of rolls with egg beaten with a small amount of milk, bake 20 minutes, or until rolls are golden brown.

3 comments:

Jon (was) in Michigan said...

Excellent, Rachel! My wife will be able to eat these (crazy allergies). I don't have a food processor. Does a blender work or it that too much chopping?

susie said...

hmmm... I haven't made yeast breads in a long while. These make me want to, after buying some WW pastry flour.

Rachel said...

Hey Jon! I've never tried to make this kind of thing in a blender before. I love food processors because they get things to the consistency that those wire pastry tools do, you know the ones that are for making pie crusts... Let me know how it goes if you do make it in a food processor.