Butter Rolls

I've been so so busy lately that blogging and visiting other blogs has had to take a complete back seat!

Though I have neglected everything else (read paying bills, exercising, returning calls, replying to emails - yes, I've really been mean), my kitchen, fortunately, has been buzzing with activity!

My latest craze is bread baking. I've been forcing, no, sweetly coaxing the husband to eat more bread so that I can bake more of it. Doesn't look like he has any complaints - homemade bread is really something else.

Seriously, I've had to wonder why I didn't bake bread all these years. I seem to have fallen in love with the whole process of kneading the shaggy mess into a smooth dough, to watching it rise and to punching it down, only to watch it rise once again and then have my entire house infused with the lovely aroma of freshly baked bread. This is something magical - no amount of words can even start to describe the phenomenon that is bread baking. You just have to experience it to understand it!

Butter Rolls:

Ingredients:

Bread flour: 2.5 cups
OR

Bread flour: 1.5 cups and strong whole wheat bread flour: 1 cup

Egg: 1

Lukewarm Milk: 1/2 cup (you might need about a tbsp more if you are using a combination of whole wheat and white bread flour)

Sugar : 3 tsps

Salt: 3/4 tsp

Yeast: 1 tsp

Water: 1 tbsp

Butter: 3 tbsps

for glazing and topping:

1 tbsp milk

1 tsp egg

sesame seeds, sugar, mixed herbs, coarsely ground pepper (optional)

Method:

Dissolve yeast and 1 tsp of sugar in lukewarm water. Cover and leave for about 15 mins at the end of which it will look creamy and frothy.

Beat the egg, reserve about a tsp of the beaten egg for the glaze and whisk the remaining egg with the milk.

Mix the flours with the remaining sugar and salt. Make a well in the centre of the vessel, add in the yeast mixture and the milk and egg mixture.

Add in the butter and knead till it is all incorporated into the dough. At this point, it will seem like there is too much butter and the dough will keep sliding out from between your fingers, but it will feel wonderfully soft as all the butter gets kneaded in.

Transfer the dough on to a well floured surface and knead for a further 15 mins. To ensure that the dough has been kneaded enough, here's what I do:

1. Stretch a small ball of dough between your fingers. If you have kneaded the dough enough, the stretched dough will ressemble a blown bubblegum - translucent and thin, the dough will not tear as you stretch it. This is also called as the windowpane test.

2. Press your finger into the dough, if it springs back, the dough has been kneaded enough.

Transfer the dough to a well oiled glass vessel, cover and leave it to rise till it has doubled in volume. This usually takes me about an hour and a half.

Knock back the dough and knead again for a minute or two. Cut it into 8 or 10 or 12 (basically, as many as you want - I normally make 8) evenly sized pieces and roll each piece on a floured surface pressing the air out till you have an evenly shaped round ball.

Cover and let the rolls double in size - this takes me about 40-45 mins.

Preheat the oven to 200 deg C .

Mix in the reserved tsp of egg with a tbsp of milk to prepare the glaze - you can also leave out the egg and use just the milk. Just before baking them, glaze the rolls with a soft pastry brush. Add any topping you want, I normally top half the batch with sesame seeds.

Bake the rolls for about 15 mins or till the top is golden brown and the rolls sound hollow when tapped underneath.

Divine. Absolutely divine!!