The Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book_ A Guide to Whole-Grain Breadmaking - Laurel Robertson [96]
Making Soft Dinner Rolls
When you have built up a solid reputation as a breadbaker, the time will come when Aunt Agatha (who has never until now acknowledged the existence of brown flour) approaches you and announces, “You may make the rolls for the Family Reunion Thanksgiving Dinner. Make them soft and tasty—and light, not like those rocks you served when we had dinner at your house.”
Well, maybe your aunt is more diplomatic, but the implication is there. It is a challenge—one of the more interesting challenges in breadmaking, because you want to take the hot rolls out of the oven at the last minute so that they are fresh and soft and the kitchen and dining room are full of their fragrance. If the dears don’t work, there is nowhere to hide. But if they do work, the critics are really impressed. “These rolls taste just like you hope the ones they serve in a nice restaurant will taste, only they never do.” Ah, glory.
GENERAL SUGGESTIONS
The instructions that follow should guide an experienced baker to make choices that will produce very beautiful results, but if there is more in this section than you ever wanted to know about making rolls, ignore the excruciating detail. Just form a loaf’s worth of any light dough into smooth balls, let them rise, and bake them. Served hot from the oven, your rolls will be delicious, and probably just as welcome to their eaters as they would be if they were made using every trick in the book. That said, here are the fine points (for Aunt Agatha’s kin).
FLOUR
If the occasion is a dressy one, choose very finely ground flour. For less formal times, coarse stone-ground flour makes wonderfully “country” rolls, tender and flaky. If you want them chewy, go for the highest-gluten hard spring wheat flour you can find. For the melt-in-your-mouth variety, a slightly lower gluten content is called for—for example, a reasonable winter wheat flour of medium strength. Or use your high-gluten flour, substituting whole wheat pastry flour for one cup of it.
FOR SOFTNESS
Including the softer flour will help give a tenderer roll. Chief among the professional baker’s tricks is using lots of fat. We would go so far as to double the amount of butter in the recipe for a special occasion, and enhance its effect by using buttermilk, for example, which helps give a very tender crumb texture when it is used as part of the liquid measure of the dough.
EGGS
Since their yolks lend richness and tenderness, and their whites give a higher rise, eggs are often included in roll dough. Their presence doesn’t improve the flavor of the roll much, though, when you are using whole wheat. If you want to include eggs, be extra careful not to let the rolls dry out in the proofing, and be sure not to overbake them, or they will be dry and horrid. Our Challah recipe makes good eggy rolls if you follow these suggestions. For best results, proof in a humid place and bake with a little steam at the outset.
THE DOUGH
Whether or not you include eggs, your rolls will achieve their best flavor and highest rise only if you knead the dough until the gluten is completely developed, and keep the consistency quite soft. Also, be careful not to let the dough ferment too long, particularly if you are going to take the extra time to make fancy shapes. If you are not an old hand at shaping rolls and think you might need some leeway, you can let half the dough rise its second time in a cooler spot so that it is not ready to shape until you have finished with the first half. This is also a useful ploy if your oven space is limited: you can arrange for the second pan of rolls