another reason to love fall

The start of homemade bread season. It's far too hot to cook bread in the summer. With fall comes the fresh rolls and bread at our house. These, from last night, along with a big pot of stew. Mmmm.



Laura, because I know you watched it, our stew was beef, not the kind featured on Wife Swap last night. Shudder.

My favorite recipe for rolls:

The original recipe is actually twice this (but the flour is about 6 cups and use only one egg), but it won't fit in my bread machine so I make half. This recipe will make about 18-20 nice sized dinner rolls.

2 1/4 teaspoons (or 1 packet) yeast

7 ounces warm water

1/4 cup sugar

1/2 tablespoon salt

1 egg

1/4 cup butter, softened

3 1/2-4cups flour, give or take

In the bread machine, dissolve yeast in warm water. Add sugar and salt. Stir to dissolve.
Let rest a little while while you gather up the other things you need.
Add softened butter and egg to the bread machine. Add about 2 cups of the flour and start machine on the dough setting. As the flour becomes incorporated, add more, as needed, until the dough is no longer sticky. I end up resetting it because mine starts kneading it too slow before I'm satisfied with the texture. Once the dough seems good I start the dough setting over, close it up and let it go.

My machine takes 90 minutes for it to be complete.

Punch down dough. Lightly grease a baking sheet or two round cake pans, whichever you prefer. Grab wads of dough a bit bigger than a walnut in the shell. Squish into a smooth ball by turning the dough inside out onto itself. Sorry, I can't think of a better way to describe that.

Place on cooking sheet or in cake pans. Lightly cover with plastic wrap and let rise in a warm spot for about an hour. If my kitchen is cool, I turn the oven on the lowest setting for a few minutes then turn it off and open the door until it feels like it's pleasantly warm. Then pop the sheet/pans in to rise.

After an hour, take them out and preheat your over to 400 degrees. You can lightly brush the tops with something, if you want. For the rolls above, I brushed them with a beaten egg mixed with a little water. You could also do melted butter, milk, or cold water.

Bake about 12 minutes. Take out and watch your family consume in 5 minutes what you just took hours to make. Grab one for yourself before they're gone.

I use this recipe to make bigger rolls for sandwiches/barbecue, also.