Morning rolls

[ElThomsono]

Unfortunately you cannot buy a decent roll in this country, even half the ones in Scotland aren't right; what I require is a well fired morning roll: crispy hard top and fluffy inside. So, I go to Aldi and get one of these:

Fifty sheets for the cheapest stand mixer on the internet, with a three year warranty. It'll do until I decide to upgrade or get bored of this.

Just bung all the stuff in and it'll do all the hard work and plop out a ball of well kneaded dough.

Here they are after the second rise, Opinel 10 for scale.

While they bake, weld up a broken wire rack for your mother in law. It seems that it's not stainless as we all believed but in fact a bizarre heavy plating over what is presumably pot metal? The arc welder cut right through it in any case, probably depositing hexavalent chrome in my lungs.

Not a bad result for a first attempt, next time round I'll do a larger batch at a lower temperature.

Recipe follows:

 

[ElThomsono]

650g strong white flour (5 cups)
1 ½ tsp salt
400ml lukewarm water (between 37-43 degrees Celsius – make sure the water isn’t too hot or it will kill the yeast) (1 2/3 cups)
1 ½ tsp caster sugar
7g dried instant yeast
40g lard (cold, chopped) (3 tbsp)
Rice flour to dust

Servings: 9-12 rolls
Prep time: 40 minutes
Proofing time: 2-3 hours
Baking time: 15 minutes

Add the sugar to the warm water and stir until dissolved.

Add the yeast and stir again to combine. Set aside.

In the bowl of an electric stand mixer, whisk together the flour and salt.

Rub the lard into the flour to make breadcrumbs, like you would with scones.

Make a well in the centre of the flour mixture and pour in the yeast mixture.

Stir with a wooden spoon until it starts to come together into a dough.

Using a dough hook attachment on your mixer, mix the dough on a medium speed for 10 minutes. You can also knead by hand if preferred but make sure to do so for the full 10 minutes to get it nice and elastic.

Sprinkle your work surface with a little rice flour. Turn the dough out onto the surface and shape it into a ball with your hands.

Lightly grease a large mixing bowl with a little oil and place the dough in it. Cover loosely with cling film or a tea towel and leave in a warm place (around 25 degrees C is ideal) to proof for 1 to 1 ½ hours, or until roughly doubled in size.

Turn out the dough onto your floured work surface and squash it down flat with your hands to knock out the gas. Then roughly roll it up into a sausage shape to make it easier to cut into pieces.

For perfectly even rolls, you can weigh the dough and divide it by the number of rolls you’d like to make. The mixture will make 9-12 depending on the size of the rolls and your baking tray. Cut the dough into your sections and shape these into balls by rolling them with your hands.

Dust the top of each roll with a little rice flour.

Squash the rolls down into slightly flattened disks using your hands or a rolling pin. They will rise back up again during the second proof.

Line a large oven tray with baking paper. Place the rolls inside. Make sure they are touching to get that pull-apart effect.

Cover the tray loosely with cling film or a tea towel and leave in a warm place to proof for another 1 to 1 ½ hours or until nicely plump and risen. About 15 minutes before your proofing time is up, preheat the oven to 230C.

Bake the rolls for 15 minutes or until golden all over the top.

Use the baking paper to lift the rolls out onto a cooling rack. Allow them to cool for 15 minutes or so before pulling them apart.

If you’re ever in Scotland, you might notice rolls for sale that look a little, well, burnt on top. This isn’t a mistake! These are actually called “well fired” rolls. You can make your morning rolls well fired by making sure they’re high in the oven and cooking for around 5 minutes longer.

 

[MaC]

I share your dismay, and admire your solution
A decent roll is worth the gluten effect
Foam filled sponge things are horrible; no bite, no texture, just fall apart polystyrene.

M

 

[Oldtimer]

Nothing like a warm roll with honey first thing in the morning.

 

[noddy]

Ever been to Leicester? Bacon and egg or sauasage and egg cobs. I lived on them for three years. Perfect amount of crunch but not so much as to leave you looking like a Jackson Pollock painting from his early egg yolk and ketchup phase.

 

[ElThomsono]

I've been to Leicester but didn't hang about to try the local food, googling them they look like the sort of thing Morrisons sell, pretty decent.

That's more what I'm trying to achieve, but with just the crest burnt. I'm struggling to find photos of the perfect morning roll let alone bake one.

One thing I noticed is when they first come out the oven they're rock hard but quickly soften up, so they probably could have tolerated a bit longer.

 

[MaC]

 

[Saint-Just]

I know nothing about welding but it still looks shit

On the other hand, your rolls look good. And my n° 9 says Hi

 

[noddy]

And my n° 9 says Hi

Should be a club

 

[Saint-Just]

In the salt marshes, with my trusted friends.
The Opinel is loving it: carried all the time (law is the same as the UK but they say nothing if the knife is an Opinel unless they catch you removing it from someone’s belly), cutting saucisson, spreading rillettes on a crusty bread, etc.

 

[ElThomsono]

Took another run at these, this time with larger quantities of ingredients and proving them in a slightly warmed oven (turned on for two minutes). It's had a hell of an effect, the dough was like something from a bad horror film. If I'd have known I'd have aimed for more than six.

 

[MaC]

Dammit man, that makes me hungry
Do those not look excellent ??
Very well done indeed

 

[Brian T]

Read "Professional Baking", a Cordon Blue school textbook by Wayne Gisslen.
Bready things are formulas which are best listed as the weight of ingredients.
Then, you call the weight of flour 100 and scale everything else against this.
The result is that you can take your formula up to car-load quantities.
Using spoons and cups is doomed to be rough.

 

[ElThomsono]

Interesting, I'd been weighing everything (I even got a set of "drug dealer" scales to get the minuscule quantities of yeast correct) but I was slightly offended by the need to divide each measure by 1/3 etc.

Part of me was worried that the mixer would struggle with more dough but it did a fantastic job even with over a kilo in the bowl.

 

[MaC]

I find there's an issue with only weighing though. It depends on the quality of the flour, and the yeast. How absorbent it is. How warm or cold the room is. How long it's all taking.

I do think weighing is more accurate than cups and spoonsfull but sometimes you need just a wee bit more either flour or liquid.

 

[Juttle]

I’ve been making bread at home for years and I’ve found that you always need a little bit extra of something to get the look and feel right. Once you recognise the consistency of the dough you’re aiming for it’s easy enough to just add a little bit of flour or water to get it right. I always weigh everything to start with but, at the end, feel and eye always works!

 

[Nice65]

I really ought to be using the Neeva browser more. This just popped up on my YouTube home page. I’ve been meaning to make my own crumpets for ages.

 

[noddy]

Rich, have you been cloned by the AIs?