We always have some Italian dishes during our holidays. Whether it is Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve or Easter, there is always ravioli on our table as a first dish. We would set up an assembly line with all of us pitching in to make hundreds of them before Thanksgiving so that we could have them for Christmas also. They freeze very well, but don’t ever defrost them before cooking them, just put them into a large amount of salted boiling water directly from the freezer.

http://turosdolci.wordpress.com/2009/10/27/ricotta-ravioli-from-“the-old-country”/

I'm keen to see what everyone else is baking for the holidays this year.

My wife figures my bread is now good enough that we can have it on Christmas.  Her family is Swiss and usually buys quite an assortment of breads for breakfast on Christmas morning.  Attached is a photo of day one's baking ... 2 pain au levan, 2 pecan & cherry pain au levain, and a batch of Mark's Portuguse Sweet Rolls.  Day two (tomorrow) is a whole wheat sourdough, rye and challah.

Hello All,

I have been enlisted to make the bread/rolls for our Thanksgiving feast this year. No problem there. I look forward to it. But my In-laws are asking for a recipe I once made, (handed down by my aunt) and quite honestly it is a pain.  It goes like this:

3 C hot water
2 Sticks butter
1 1/2 C sugar
6 eggs beaten
1 1/2 t salt
2/3 C powdered milk

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Yeast combo
3 T yeast 1/4 C sugar 3/4 C lukewarm water

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10 C flour
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Now for the kicker.  After all this you roll it out, smother it with another stick of melted butter and roll it up. They are like cinnamon rolls without the fun cinnamon or sugar.
The recipe says to bake at 350 for 15 min. This part always drove me crazy because if you don't place the rolls just right, they run into each other and you end up with a doughy mass in the middle of the pan.  Even if you succeed, the roll is huge, heavy, slippery with butter (i like butter. I even love butter. but come on!)

Personally I would like  a nice simple crusty roll. Tasty and soft on the inside. good for splitting in half and stacking with turkey or the antipast.  But finding a recipe that really crackles has been hard in and of its self. Reinhart's white bread rolls are OK as far as they go....
but they are white bread. Any ideas for my ideal roll (or even how to make the above gut bombs palatable to anyone who likes a little bread with their butter) would be greatly appreciated. Thanks! and have a happy Thanksgiving!