Hey hey, get your mind out of the gutter, these are the bread-y kind! I’ve made bread before but never with eggs and milk, and I wanted to try and make that fluffy, airy kind of bread that is soft and squooshy and tears real nice and stuff. So I scoured the net and came across this recipe on a site called ‘the kitchn’ (yes, the ‘e’ is omitted purposefully) for soft dinner rolls, by Emma Christensen;
It gives clear instructions on what you’ll need, how to deal with the dough and shape the rolls. All I did was convert to metric and I was away! I have very minimal kitchen equipment – basically no electric whiskers or mixers or the like. If it’s not possible to do by hand I can’t do it, basically. So this was a recipe I could do quite easily. As with all bread it just needs time, care and attention. So like most things in life, right? If you’re wondering why there are no ‘before’ pictures – only ‘after’ pictures, it’s because I made a mess and I seemed to constantly have flour or really sticky dough on my hands – pretty much at all times so to avoid buggering up the camera I decided it was safer to take snaps when the area was safe and free from gloopy and/or airborne floury type substances.
First off, I used the wrong flour. (And this is also why I haven’t put my conversions on here as they could be wrong. If I make it again I’ll put them up). I used mostly strong bread flour, then topped up the last 100g or so with plain (all-purpose) flour. Strong bread flour must weigh more than plain flour because when I got to the bit where you incorporate the wet and dry ingredients together, I found the mixture was way too sticky and I had to incorporate at least a couple of handfuls more flour (at least) to get it workable. I have worked with high hydration doughs before – I made some focaccia which I made without the use of a dough scraper and it was er, fun to say the least (I’ll post when I get round to it, with mention of the ‘stretch, slap and fold’ technique. Intriguing, yes?) but this was ridiculous. I must have measured something wrong. But I managed to fix it – yay and carried on with the risings and the shapings, and the baking until I got this. How cute is (what I have named) the runt of the litter?
When cut open you can see the bit where I have folded it towards the centre when I was shaping it, but it’s fine by me. When I used to make ceramic sculptures I’d purposely leave thumb prints and stuff on the surface so as to remind me that I’d made this huge thing by hand, and that a machine hadn’t taken credit for this thing that had occupied months of my life! I love the little imperfections sometimes, as long as they’re aesthetic and don’t compromise the integrity of the thing if its purpose is to function as something. Then I can’t handle it and I have to fix it haha.
So all in all, this recipe was easy to follow, and the bread, was soft, fluffy, with the right amount of sweetness, and even I couldn’t fluff it up. Excuse the ‘fluffy’ pun.
For people wondering ‘where are the posts about fiber and yarn and stuff?’ – I’m on it! I’ve been uploading a truck load of photos to my flickr which is taking forever and a day but I’m working on posts about washing fleece, dyeing roving, and one on the properties of milk silk and soy silk. Mmm yummy. But it might take a while so I will intersperse with bread pictures and stuff until these posts are written coherently..
Posted at https://ilikecolours.wordpress.com/ on 24th October 2013
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