I know it seems like I do a lot of bread baking, but I really don’t. It usually takes me about a year to 14 months to get through a 20kg bag of AP flour between sweet (cakes, pies, cookies) and savoury (breads/buns/rolls, gravies) uses.
I’ve been holding back on the last of the flour from my previous purchase … just in case of emergency. Not that I can really imagine what a ‘flour emergency’ would consist of. Still, after picking up a new bag on Saturday, before going off to donate blood, I’m now flour rich.
So I baked 2 pizzas on Sunday and tried a new recipe for crusty rolls today. I got the recipe from a FB bread baking group.
I wasn’t sure that I wanted to make a dozen rolls so I baked a couple of mini loaves with half of the dough, instead. I’m pretty sure I’ve found my go-to crusty roll recipe.
Of course, I had to taste test the rolls so I made a sammie with one filled with a couple of large chicken fingers/small cutlets and a generous slather of Miracle Whip.
SO good.
Crusty Rolls – you can see the crumb on the top of the roll to the right
I wanted to try a higher baking temp (425 deg F) for the loaves so they got over-proved by the time I got them into the oven and there wasn’t a lot of oven spring left in the yeast. I suspected that would happen when I slashed the loaf.
Natalie D’s Crusty Rolls – makes 1 dozen rolls
1 1/4 cup warm water
2 tsp yeast
1 tbsp sugar
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 tbsp oil
1 large egg
3 – 3 1/4 cup bread flour (added about 1 cup more flour and kneaded for 10 min)
In a small bowl, dissolve the sugar in the warm water. Sprinkle the yeast on top. Let sit until foamy, 5-10 minutes.
In a large bowl, add 1 cup of the flour and salt and mix togther well. Add proofed yeast mixture, egg and oil. With a wooden spoon, beat well for a couple of minutes. Stir in the rest of the flour, half a cup at a time, reserving about a half a cup for kneading.
Sprinkle some flour on a working surface and turn out the dough. Knead until you have a soft but not sticky dough.
Transfer dough to a greased bowl and let rise for about an hour or until doubled.
Shape into 12 balls and lay out on a greased baking sheet. Cover lightly with a towel and let rise for about 40 minutes.
Preheat the oven to 400 deg F and bake rolls for 12-15 minutes.
Trial 1:
6 rolls, glazed with water, baked at 400 deg F for 20 min
2 mini loaves, glazed with EVOO, baked at 425 deg F for 20 min.
Rolls and Mini Loaves
Cooking is Fun ... Really!! 
You’re a very good bread maker. I love the look of your pizza; it’s lunchtime here in Oz and you’ve made me very hungry xx
Thank you but I belong to a bread baking group and those ladies and gentlemen set the bar pretty high. I’m still on the low end.
I made myself hungry with the pics too and it’s 10pm ET. I went and made myself another chicken cutlet sandwich and had some apricot jam on the rest of the mini loaf I had started. 🙂
I need to try baking more often:)
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I find it very satisfying to bake … even though eating up the results takes ages. 🙂
Give it a try. It’s lots of fun.
Yum! I love bread making too, there is just something so therapeutic about it. I really want a slice of that pizza!
Freshly baked bread can’t be beat and I enjoy the kneading etc. I wish I could share the pizza with you. 🙂
20 kg in one year?? Wow! I must buy flour (1kg bag) maybe three times a year… it illustrates how much I bake. Even sweets I make are more and more often flourless or made with butter puff pastry which obviously I buy.
On the other hand I do buy rice by 5 kg bags 😉 no idea how often.
The array of your baked food products is impressive!
Thank you. I like a good pizza every couple of weeks and never buy it so that accounts for some of the flour as do the recent sourdough starter experiments. Much of the results of THAT went into the garbage. 😦
And I still have lots of baked goods on my bucket list. 🙂
The bread looks fantastic and the rolls look wonderful too. I agree with Charlie, you are a very good bread maker.
The 20kg reminded me of when I first got married (almost 30 years ago) and I sent my new husband out with a shopping list. He came from a relatively well-to-do family unlike mine who watched every penny. I had 20kg flour on the list, without thinking there would be no filters on when he did the shopping. He came home with a bag that he paid (you’d better sit down) $11.99 for! Almost 30 years ago! I was horrified and when I asked him to explain, all he could muster was, “but it was on the list.” To this day, I write the price he should expect to pay on the shopping list (not everything, just a few things). But he has also learned to watch costs, sometimes abandoning key ingredients because they were too pricey (like cauliflower a couple of weeks ago at $5.99, what the heck was with THAT?!?!?!)
Thank you. That’s a funny story. I was raised to be frugal from necessity which has served me well over the years especially in my grocery shopping. I know what you mean about having to keep an eye out for sudden jumps in the price of key items … for me it’s broccoli.
There were a few other situations, like $14 for a small bag of almonds, $12 for three red peppers, that forced me to take back the shopping for a short time! Now he knows where the best value for milk and eggs can be had!
Those are crazy prices.
those pizzas look amazing. well, i love anything that has bread in it haha. yep i admit it, i’m a carb addict. // ▲ conundrumofcoitus.com ▲
I find making bread/pizza dough pretty easy though I know some people who have issues with yeast. My mom did. Strange.
All of your bread baking looks so good. Your pizza looks like it was perfectly cooked and just the way I like it with not too much stuff on it. 🙂
Thank you. I thought I went a bit overboard on the toppings myself, though I’m cutting back on the cheese these days. 🙂