It's week 8 in the Inside the Jewish Bakery Challenge - Semester 1. This week is Onion Rolls. Sadly, I'll be sitting out the next few dessert-heavy weeks.

Once my confusion over how to deal with the onion mix was clarified (thanks all) this proved to be an easy, fast bake (in terms of actual prep). My notes follow:

• I used 1 oz of the onion water and 9 oz plain water
• My egg was almost a full ounce heavier than called for
• I used 100% milled wheat, a 50/50 mix of hard red and hard white.
• My cooking time ended up being around 25 minutes.

These are tasty and the outside is crunchy. They aren't overpoweringly onion-y, which I'd been concerned about. I think the flavor would be improved if I make a soaker with the whole wheat next time and let it sit in the fridge overnight prior to adding yeast. I'll make them again for sure.

I've made cinnamon rolls and other sweet doughs successfully for years now, but I've always had trouble refrigerating them.  If I make the rolls and bake them the same day, they are tall and soft; just perfect!  If I make the dough today, roll out the rolls, put them in the pan and let them rise (~1hr) then refrigerate them overnight to bake the next morning, I have problems.  I usually let them warm on the counter ~30 minutes before baking, and they usually fall and come out of the oven "short and dense".  They also often taste a bit off; almost alcoholic, like they've fermented.  (We tend to keep our refrigerator very cold.)

What can I do to keep them tall, soft and tasting good?  Should I not let them come to room temp before baking?  Should I be MORE patient after taking them out of the refrigerator and let them warm/rise an hour (or even more)?

This happened this past weekend with a monkey bread I made, and I'm getting frustrated.  It's so much more convenient to pre-make the rolls or monkey bread and then bake for breakfasts the next morning!  I really don't want to get up at 3am just so my in-laws can have fresh cinnamon rolls to start the day!

- Greg

Three years ago, I made Double Knotted Rolls from a formula provided by nbicomputers, AKA Norm Berg, AKA co-author with Stan Ginsburg of Inside the Jewish Bakery. (See: Norm's Double Knotted Rolls) We enjoyed these rolls a lot, especially for sandwiches made with leftover Thanksgiving turkey.

When I received my copy of Inside the Jewish Bakery yesterday, I had already planned to make these rolls today. However, the book had no specific recipe for these rolls and no indication which of the three formulas for rolls should be used for them. I was pretty sure it would not be the "Light Enriched" dough, because that is the one used for Kaiser Rolls, and Norm specifically distinguished between the "soft roll" dough formula and that used for "hard rolls," like Kaiser Rolls. That left two formulas. Neither was the formula I had used in 2008, but I decided to use the "Sweet Egg Dough," because that looked closest. Here is the result (in photos):

Rolls shaped and ready for proofing

Mixing followed the general instructions for mixing roll dough, and it worked well. Instructions (in Norm's words) for shaping can be found in this topic: Double knot roll. There are numerous YouTube videos of this technique, many erroneously presented as the method for shaping Kaiser Rolls. In addition, both Hamelman's Bread and Greenstein's Secrets of a Jewish Baker have good roll shaping illustrations. I scaled the rolls at 3 oz, with one bit of dough left over to make a sort of Figure Eight Roll.

Rolls proofed and egg-washed

Inside the Jewish Bakery has an enlightening discussion of how different degrees of proofing were used for different products made with the same dough. For the Double Knotted Rolls, a 3/4 proofing is necessary to get the right crumb texture.

These rolls can be baked plain or with poppy seeds or sesame seeds. (Onion rolls are a whole other genre!) My wife much prefers sesame seeds. I can go with sesame or poppy.

Rolls proofed, washed and seeded. Ready to bake.

I baked at 350 F for about 15 minutes. The rolls were slow to brown. Next time, I'll use the oven's convection setting, probably at 330 F.

Baked and cooling

These rolls were less rich than I remember, but still very good.  Next time, I believe I would return to the formula Norm provided in 2008. Who's counting calories?

David

Submitted to YeastSpotting

I got some of the San Francisco sourdough culture from http://www.sourdo.com/. I decided to make two different starters -- one that was fed nothing but King Arthur Bread Flour, the other fed nothing but home-milled hard red and hard white wheat. Both produced extremely active cultures within 4 days of 12-hour feedings. I used the basic sourdough bread recipe from BBA, using KA Bread Flour for one, and an 85% extraction sifting of hard red wheat (13%) for the second. Both were given a light wash of egg yolk whisked with milk before the seasame seeds were sprinkled on. They had a 5 hour bulk fermentation and a 2.5 hour final proof.

The KA rolls were crunchy on the outside, but were very much 'white bread'-like on the inside. My wife likes them, I'm thinking about turning them into french toast. They have almost no sour flavor at all, and not much depth. The whole wheat rolls, on the other hand, have a more assertive sour flavor (but still nowhere near King Arthur's New England sourdough). They also (unsurprisingly) have way, way more flavor overall.

I'm going to keep both alive and separate and try again in a few weeks. I'll also try a much longer bulk fermentation.

King Arthur Bread Flour 

Whole Wheat

Dear TFL-ers,

Time for another American Classic

Dainty and small, buttery and fluffy on the inside, with a nice crisp crust. They must have been all the craze back in the days they were created: Parker House Rolls. Coming from the same place as the Boston Cream Pie, created around the 1870-s, allegedly by a baker who threw a fit and clenched the dough he held in his hand before throwing it back on the counter. By happy accident the rolls, folded over themselves, bloomed into  little delicate rolls during proofing. Whether this story has any truth to it....

The Parker House roll has evolved since then. When googling some of the images, you see a wide variety of shapes and sizes. The BreadLab likes to proof them with the "backbone" of the roll on the sheet pan, going up instead of sideways, pinching the dough ever so lightly together to create that nice "blooming effect"during the final proof, almost like you would do with dumplings. Make sure not to pinch them too tight, or they won't get "undone" during final proofing!

Parker House in Boston (click the picture, to go to the video!)

More than on their own accord, these rolls were made world famous by Fannie Farmer. A great name to begin with (once heard, never forgotten), and a perfect name when you're in the food business, or so it seems. Her cookbook "The Boston Cooking-School Cookbook" triumphed as soon as it hit the market. The rest is history: by now about 4 million copies have been sold. Good for Fannie, because the publisher at the time didn't want to take the chance and made her pay for the printed copies, so she kept all the rights to her self! Go Fannie!

The original online! (click pic to go to the video)

The original publication is  online as part of The Historic American Cookbook Project and makes great reading for bake crazy people, but knowing you TFL-ers, you probably have a pdf copy on your hard drives already! If you don't; download it for free, it really makes good reading, and is a great source of inspiration. Whenever I feel like "an American classic", I turn to Fannie (okay, and sometimes Julia as well, but I think that is more because I just can't resist her voice).

There are some videos out there that show how to make Parker House Rolls. The BreadLab takes on the challenge of getting more views than Martha Stewart though, so if you would please give me a helping hand ;-) Looking for the link? Click either of the two pictures in this post and you will be taken there!

Happy Baking!

Freerk

P.S. If you are on Facebook, check out my "BreadLab" page. If you "like" it, hit the like-button and help me get my bread-project funded. One second of your time, and a big difference for me :-)

update: it seems it can be done:

here here! wanna see the vid: click te play button :-))) thanx Floyd!

I just love this recipe, thanks to Floyd for posting it!  It is just sweet enough and soft enough that you can't stop eating them!  I made these to go with my blackened salmon burgers............YUM!!  The sweetness of the roll was just a delicious combo!

Based on a recipe from cityhippyfarmgirl through Yeast Spotting:

http://cityhippyfarmgirl.com/2011/09/20/golden-light-rye-rolls/

I thought I'd give these a go.  I didn't have the malt flour, and my shaping is not quite up to scratch - so I went more for the rustic look and didn't do the rye wash.  Also I didn't have flaxseed so used linseed instead!

Recipe:

200g starter at 100% hydration (I did this as a preferment from starter to make sure it was lively after a week in the fridge)
250g strong white bread flour
100g rye flour
50g golden flaxseed
250g water
10g salt

Method:

Mixed all except salt for an autolyse of about an hour.  Quite a few S&F over about a 4 hour period - quite a sticky dough!

Cut into 6 chunks and roughly shaped for a 20min rest; shaped into batards (couldn't quite get the points from the original) and proofed for about 2 hours on a teatowel until well risen.  Bedtime dictated timing for baking - so I didn't really check if they were fully proofed.  10mins under a cover at 220C, then 20mins uncovered at 220C (turning once) - this felt quite long for rolls, but they are quite big!

And - for those who would prefer to see the real colour rather than the jazzy iPhone photo:

Toasted for breakfast - very nice flavour, "yum" said OH, "tasty - but a bit like a crumpet" (not too sure what this bit means!)

Would do again...

We sailed on a Russian cadet-training ship and were served wonderful dinner rolls with a carrot center.  I am quite sure the carrots were leftovers from the night's dinner before.  Does anyone have a recipe for these?  Does anyone know of other things that might go into rolls such as these?

Hi all,
Question about baking temperatures.
Suppose we take two types of bread dough.
Dough #1. Typical French Bread  type of dough made with High Gluten Flour 100%, Water 68%, Yeast 1%, Salt 2%
Dough #2, Standard Hoagie bun or Dinner roll: Flour, Milk, Water, Eggs, Sugar, Oil, Salt
What would happen to both of these types of dough if they were baked at:
350 degrees?
400 degrees?
450 degrees?
    (I know the answer for dough #1 in this range)
500 and higher?
My main question is can I bake either of these doughs at 350 degrees?

Thanks

Or so it would appear.  Just look at these innocent, unbaked rolls.  See how happy they are:

And then see them after being baked:

Ahh! Demon rolls!

Just wanted to share. :)