Elise's Honey Wheat Rolls

[I wrote this post yesterday from Sister-In-Law's house.]

The girls and I got together today to bake up a storm. Well, actually, I have no control over the weather, so I'm not baking a "storm" per se. But we are baking a lot. Sister-In-Law is making pie of many varieties--pumpkin, lemon, coconut, and maybe even chocolate cream (which is not really "baked," but whatever.) I'm making honey wheat rolls. Sister is making...coasters. That's not a funny name for a snack food. She's actually making Mod Podge coasters with scrapbook paper and other items on while tiles. She's a good cook and everything, but we'll have so much food that we decided the rolls would be from both of us.

Anyway, I thought I would make this a post about how to make my Honey Wheat Rolls, which I kind of made up, but not really. But kind of. You'll see.

Step 1: Locate the recipe, which was hiding in the back of my Better Homes & Gardens cookbook, disguised as a folded piece of xerox paper.

Elise's Honey Wheat Rolls
1 C warm water
1 C warm milk
2 eggs
2/3 C butter, softened
1/2 C honey
2 t salt
2-1/2 C wheat flour
5 C white flour
4-1/2 t active dry yeast
3 T butter


Step 2: Assemble the cast of characters ingredients:

1: Yeast; 2: Butter/Margarine; 3: Eggs; 4: Cake pans; 5: Sippy cup of milk, for easy, no spill transport; 6: White flour; 7: Salt; 8: Wheat flour; 9: Honey

Oooh and aah over how pretty the honey is. Take a picture or two:

Step 3: Mix (by hand or with a mixer, but the mixer is easier) together all the wet ingredients and the yeast. Be careful not to overheat your water or milk (or even your butter if you're like me and forgot to take the stick out of the freezer in time and you have to microwave it to soften it and you end up with molten liquid butter that sits on the counter for a while to cool). Where was I? Oh, don't overheat or you will kill your yeast and get flat rolls. Just trust me. But don't make it too cold either, or your yeast will take FOREVER to do its job and you'll end up with...flat rolls. This is probably why people find bread so tricky. Just make sure it's a little warmer than your skin, I guess. That's my rule of thumb anyway--no, really...I stick my thumb in it and if it doesn't feel too hot, I use it.

Step 4: Stir in both flours slowly, until it's more dough than batter. You may need a little more or a little less than the recipe calls for--every batch is different. If you need to cut or add, do it to the white flour. Keep all the wheat flour you can.

Step 5: Knead in the remaining flour. Just dump the sticky mass onto a floured surface and go at it. It's quite relaxing, really. This is my favorite part. Really go at it for about 10 minutes.

Step 6: Place the dough in a greased bowl and cover it with a towel--make sure it's in a warm place. If your house runs kind of cold, set your oven to 150 degrees and sit the bowl on top of it. Let it rise for 1 hour.Or until it's doubled. If it seems to be lagging behind at this point, give it another fifteen minutes and then don't worry about it. It rises again later.

Step 7: Separate the dough into 30 pieces (don't be like me a listen to the recipe--32 is a difficult number to make sit in the pans. Just do 30, okay?). Work each piece into a nice round, roll-looking-thing (specific, right?):

Step 8: Arrange them in two 13x9 cake pans and set them aside to rise for 1 hour (covered by a towel again). Or so. Use your best judgement--they will rise more in the oven, but you want them to be pretty large before they go in. And don't be like me (again) and not to the math on the timing and realize you have music rehearsal at 6:00 and the bread won't finish rising until about 6:15, so you leave them on the counter until 11:00 pm, hoping they don't take over the kitchen like that folktale about the magic spaghetti pot (does anyone know what I'm talking about?). So, yeah. Don't do that.

Step 9: Bake at 400 degrees for 10-15 minutes or until light golden.Watch them carefully, because the tops will not be as golden as you expect when the bottoms are done. Take them out a little early than your gut tells you to do, because they will continue to brown a little in the pan.

Step 10: Rub the remaining butter over the top of the hot rolls, allowing it to melt and run down the sides. It's okay if it pools between them. No, wait. It's MORE THAN OKAY. I used an entire HALF STICK of butter for this process and it seemed a little excessive, but they turned out great, so do with that what you will. The butter will make the tops a little more golden, will keep the rolls soft, and will taste like heaven at dinnertime.

Step 11: Serve warm (rewarm in a low oven for a few minutes if serving then next day). Feed them to your friends and family. Allow them to love you. It's okay. You earned it.

Elise's Focaccia - Part Three

Once the dough has risen for about an hour, it will look like this:

Or this:

Now, turn it out onto a greased and lightly floured pan and let it rest for a half hour. Be careful how you flour it, because any flour that is not under the bread when you bake it will brown and not smell good—it will not hurt the bread and cleans pretty easily, but may not be the pleasant-baking-bread scent you would like to fill your home with. [I forgot to grease and flour the pan so I had to move the dough once it had rested, which is a hassle and can mess up the bread. Don’t be like me. Also, since this bread will be donated to a bake sale, I decided to cut the dough in half and make two loaves instead of my normal Hubcap of Focaccia, so I put them on separate pans. This will affect the baking time, but nothing else. The following pictures demonstrate that I am a baking rebel. And my rebelliousness gets me into trouble sometimes.]

After it has rested on the previously greased and floured pan, it will puff up again:

Now, you can start to shape it into a loaf on the same pan. Press gently and spread the dough flat, like a pizza crust. Don’t be rough with the it or it will tear or the bubbles will deflate. And the bubbles are very important to the focaccia. The focaccia and the bubbles are like BFFs. They will die without each other. Or something…

Once you’ve shaped the loaf the way you want it (hubcap, long and skinny, more squarish… go with your gut), it should be about an inch to an inch and a half thick. Using your finger (or the handle of a spoon like me), make indents in the crust all around, about ¾ of the way deep. This keeps the bubbles under control during baking, creates the characteristic focaccia texture on the top, and gives the olive oil little places to hide and distribute yumminess.

It should look like this:

Using a pastry brush, coat the top with olive oil. 

Really go to town on this. Olive oil is like the bubbles, but olive oil is in love with the focaccia. Dedicated to making the focaccia be the best it can be. Wait, what? Anyway… Take your coarse salt (mine is sea salt in a grinder that I open to the widest setting, but you could probably just use regular coarse salt…) and go to town again.

Do it until you can see the salt:

Bake at 475 for 15-20 minutes, until golden and beautiful (if you split the dough to make two loaves, bake for about 10-15 minutes). I usually turn mine or trade shelves about halfway through to facilitate even baking. Here’s one of the herbed loaves:

Let's see the salty golden brilliance up close:

It also tastes delicious. I would slice one so you could see it in all its glory, but I’m giving these away. And people are hesitant to buy stuff that looks like someone’s already been eating it.

So there you have it. In only long three posts, Elise’s Hubcap of Focaccia. Or in this case, Elise’s Small Snowshoes of Focaccia.

Elise's Focaccia - Part Two

This morning I didn’t wake up until 10:30 am, so the focaccia got a late start today.  Especially considering the fact that the yard sale started at 7:00 am.  I’m not too fussed, though. I needed the sleep and the sale goes well into the afternoon. And if it doesn’t sell, I’ll just take it to the church picnic tomorrow. On a side note, were you aware that it is practically impossible for Christians to get together and not eat? Try it sometime. I dare you.

Anyway, to baking… At this point in the morning, the sponge looks something like this:

Spongy, right? It also smells all fermenty and yeasty and amazing. Too bad I can’t put that on the Internet…Okay, so then add a cup of warm water (again, not too warm or too cold or the yeast will fail).

Then add two teaspoons of regular salt. [This will  be the plain batch, so salt is the only seasoning.] 

Stir it up while making whooshing sounds. It helps. I promise. 

Start adding the flour (up to four cups total) by the cup, mixing it all in before adding more.  

You will probably add about two and a half cups in the bowl before it looks like this: 

Then turn it out onto a floured surface and knead in the remaining flour (about a cup and a half, maybe less). 

When it’s elastic and firm (not sticky), form it into a round. Then grease a large bowl with cooking spray and put the dough in it, turning once to grease the whole thing. Like this: 

Cover with a dishtowel, place in a warm spot in your kitchen, and let it rise for an hour.

While we’re waiting for it to rise, let’s take a look at the second batch. Here, I’ve already added the water and the salt to the sponge. Now I start grinding in the Italian herbs.  

Feel free to go to town. I really don’t think it’s possible to over-herb this bread with the grinder. I’m pretty sure your arm would wear out before you did any lasting damage. Anyway, stir it up, add more if it doesn’t look flecky enough. 

Then add the flour until it’s stiff enough to turn out and knead. Look how flecky!  

And oh the aroma. Again, I wish I could put this smell on the Internet.  Knead it, put it in a greased bowl, and set aside to rise for an hour. 

Elise's Focaccia - Part One

[Edit: This post was supposed to go up last night and there was a whole Pathetically Crappy Friday disaster with my internet/computer.  So pretend this is Friday. Thanks.]

Being back to work is not all it’s cracked up to be (okay, so has anyone ever said it was cracked up to be anything?). Even the two day week could not make up for the lameness that was my Friday. I don’t really feel like going to into all the ways my day sucked, mainly because I started typing it and I just sounded like a whiny baby. So it probably wasn’t as bad as my crankiness level would lead you to believe. In fact, it’s kind of pathetic in how mediocre the crappiness was.

But can I just say that confrontation and conflict, especially when I have to initiate it to stand up for myself, makes my stomach clench, my hands go clammy, and my chest tighten? Because it does all of those things and more. So that was part of the unpleasant roller-coaster I was on today. I’m very thankful it’s the weekend.

Tomorrow, my church is having a yard sale to benefit a young friend who was recently diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer. In addition to the normal yard sale wares, we’re selling baked goods homemade and donated by the ladies at church. Sister is making cookies (if she can ever find the elusive recipe that has sent her to tearing our kitchen to shreds) and I thought I would make focaccia. It’s a simple recipe I found in Better Homes and Gardens and kind if made into my thing. You know… The thing you always make when you need to contribute to a meal or event? It’s my thing.

In honor of Pathetically Crappy Friday, I’m going to share my thing with you. All zero of you. Zero plus Roommate, who has eaten this bread and liked it. So there’s that… Anyway, feel free to make it your thing. I don’t care; I don’t own it or anything. And it tastes really good, so it would be a shame not to share it. I found it in my Better Homes and Garden cookbook, but I may have changed it a little.  In the end, it looks like a pizza crust, but thicker. Kind of like a bread hubcap. And herby, salty, delicious hubcap.

[The recipe starts by making a sponge that ferments overnight, kind of like a sourdough starter. So I’ll post the process shots from the sponge part tonight and do a separate post tomorrow to cover the rest.]

Elise’s (Hubcap of) Focaccia

You will need these things:

All-Purpose Flour, Water, Italian Herbs (I use this handy-dandy grinder from McCormick), Salt, Coarse Salt (again, grinder), Olive Oil, and Active Dry Yeast.

[Things you should note: 1. My measuring cup is messed up, because Liar insisted on putting it in the dishwasher when it clearly states that it is not dishwasher safe; 2. The salt container is pretty beat up and may or may not be sporting tape on the top; 3. The salt container is supportive of breast cancer research, as is the Fleishmann’s yeast and I would love to tell you it’s because I am so socially conscious in my consumerism, but it’s really just because they were on sale; 4. I am in no way asserting that any of these brands are the best or anything like that… Again, sale.]

To make the sponge, start with a half cup of lukewarm water (not too hot or you’ll kill the yeast, not too cold or the yeast will not activate) and add a half cup of flour.

Then add a teaspoon of yeast.

Stir it all up.

Then cover it with cling wrap. Do yourself a favor and don’t use the generic kind.

It does this:

A lot. It doesn't cling to the bowl or the food.  Just itself...

[As you can tell, I’m making two batches. One will be herbed, one will be plain. We’ll get to that tomorrow]

Set it aside, somewhere warmish where it won’t get knocked over by a cat. Then come back in the morning to finish it off.