Tropical Sourdough Dinner Rolls

Ingredients: 

50 grams of recently fed sourdough starter at 100% hydration 

220 grams of pineapple juice 

30 grams coconut syrup 

2 large eggs 

30 grams sugar 

70 grams water 

1 tsp vanilla extract 

7 grams salt 

700 grams of bread flour 

1/4 tsp ground ginger 

90 grams cold butter grated 

Note: All measurements are by weight, not volume. 

Directions: 

1. Add all ingredients to a large bowl, mix, cover, and rest for a few hours. 

2. During the resting period, perform 2 or 3 sets of Stretch & Folds at 30-45 minute intervals. 

3. Cover the bowl with a damp cloth and bench rest for 5 to 6 hours. 

4. Place the covered bowl in the refrigerator overnight for a cold retard. 

5. Next morning remove the dough from the refrigerator. Leave it covered and allow it to come up to room temperature for a few hours. It should take 2-2½ hours depending on your room temperature.

 

6. I find working with the dough easier when it is still slightly chilled. Lightly dust your workbench with flour, divide the dough, and form it into 18 balls of 70-75 grams each. 

7. Place the dough balls into greased pans, cover, and let rise to the desired size. 

8. Bake uncovered for 35 minutes at 375°F. 

Optional: Baste the rolls with butter while still warm. 

Enjoy!

If you want to make these using commercial yeast, here's how...

Ingredients if using Active Dry Yeast:

220 grams of pineapple juice

2 large eggs

60 grams coconut (palm) sugar

120 grams water

3 packets of active dry yeast (¼ oz. each)

1 tsp vanilla extract

7 grams salt

725 grams of bread flour

1/4 tsp ground ginger

90 grams cold butter grated

Directions if using Active Dry Yeast:

1. Mix tepid water, a teaspoon of coconut sugar, and yeast packets in a small bowl and let it bloom for about 10 minutes.

2. Add all ingredients to a stand mixer bowl, mix, cover, and rest for a couple of hours.

3. During the resting period, mix the dough on low for about 15 seconds 2 or 3 times at 20-minute intervals.

4. Cover the bowl with a damp cloth and bench rest until almost doubled in volume.

5. Place the covered bowl in the refrigerator overnight for a cold retard.

6. Next morning remove the dough from the refrigerator. Leave it covered and allow it to start to come up to room temperature for an hour. 

7. I find working with the dough easier when it is still slightly chilled. Lightly dust your workbench with flour, divide the dough, and form it into 18 balls of 70-75 grams each, or 24 balls of 50-55 grams each. 

8. Place the dough balls into greased pans, cover, and let rise to the desired size. 

9. Bake uncovered for 35 minutes at 375°F. 

Optional: Baste the rolls with butter while still warm. 

Fast Rising Bread/Cinnamon Twist

This bread recipe fell out of an old Betty Crocker cookbook my grandmother gave me more than 40 years ago. The recipe was given to me by an elderly American Woman when I lived in Costa Rica during the early 70's. I remember telling her (I think her name was Louise) about the things I missed from the States, one of which was the Van de Kamp bakery and the "Swedish Twist" coffee cake we frequently enjoyed as kids. She offered to teach me how to bake bread and attempt to re-create the "Swedish Twist". We have used her recipe to make delicious loaves of bread, dinner rolls and cinnamon twists. I have transcribed the recipe below, just as she wrote it out on what is now a torn sheet of paper, yellowed with age, with fading ink.

Enjoy!

(This recipe makes enough dough for 2 loaves of bread.)

Ingredients:

3/4 cup warm water

2 teaspoons sugar

2 packages of yeast (1½ TBS)

2 cups of milk (or 1 cup water & 1 cup milk)

3 tablespoons shortening

1 teaspoon salt

6 to 7 cups of flour

2 or 3 eggs

Directions:

Mix 3/4 cup of warm water, sugar and yeast, set it aside and let it stand for 10 minutes. Heat 2 cups of milk and in a large bowl mix in the shortening and gradually add 2 cups of flour until you have a smooth batter and add in the salt. Add the eggs and yeast mixture gradually adding more flour and beat to a smooth batter. Keep adding flour until you have a soft dough that is well mixed and no longer sticking to the sides of the bowl.

Cover and let it rise to double in size. Punch it down and let it rise again. Form into bread loaves, buns, or roll it out for cinnamon rolls. Bake at 375 for 20 minutes, or until golden brown. You can baste the tops with butter after they come out of the oven.

If you want to make a cinnamon twist, flatten out part of the dough into a oblong about 15" x 6" x 1/2" to 3/4" thick. Cut into 3 strips lengthwise from one end almost to the other end. Leave about one inch at what will become the top of the braid. Liberally cover with cinnamon sugar and start braiding, adding pecans and raisins into each fold. Bake at 375 for 20-25 minutes, or until golden brown. You can baste the twist with butter, or a sugar glaze, when it comes out of the oven.

Originally posted 10/15/07

Sourdough Cinnamon Pecan Rolls

Ingredients:

Dough
2 cups sourdough starter
1 small 5 ounce can of evaporated milk
1 large egg slightly beaten at room temperature
6 tablespoons butter
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt
4 cups of all purpose flour

Cinnamon Sugar Topping
4 tablespoons melted butter
1/2 cup sugar mixed with 1 tablespoons ground cinnamon
1 cup pecan pieces

Directions:

Making Dough
Scald evaporated milk, remove from heat and stir in the butter until melted. Mix the milk and butter mixture with the sourdough starter and gradually add the egg, sugar, salt and half of the all purpose flour (2 cups). Mix well with electric mixer using the paddle attachment for a few minutes, then let it stand for 30 minutes so that all the flour is absorbed. Exchange the paddle attachment for the dough hook and knead in the remaining 2 cups of flour. Knead for at least 5 minutes. The dough will be moist, this is normal.

Place the dough into a well-oiled bowl and oil the top. Cover with a tea towel or plastic wrap and put it somewhere that it’s not drafty, between 65° and 85° F. and let it rise. Check it every 30 minutes and until it is about 1½ to 2 times its original size. Test the rise by pushing your finger into the dough about one-half to three-quarters of an inch. If the dough springs back and fills the hole within a minute or so, then it isn't finished with its first rise. If most of the indentation remains, you're ready to proceed to the next step.

Shaping and Baking
Push your closed fist gently into the middle of the dough all the way to the bottom of the container, then gently push the outside parts of the dough into hole you created in the middle. This is called ‘punching down’ the dough and serves to rearrange the gluten strands to encourage a proper second rise. Now dump the dough out of the bowl and on to the counter. Gently knead and stretch the dough on a lightly floured surface into a rectangular shape approximately 10"x 16". Brush the dough with the melted butter, and sprinkle with 2/3 of the cinnamon sugar. Top with pecans. Now gently roll the dough lengthwise into a cylindrical shape. Slice the dough with a dough cutter into rounds about 1¼ inch thick. Arrange the rounds so they are almost touching in a well-oiled baking pan.

Cover the rolls with a tea towel or plastic wrap that has been sprayed with Pam. Place the baking pan in a warm (65°-80° F) non-drafty place again for the second rise. This rising could take from 1½ to 3 hours depending on the room temperature and the dough. Expect sourdoughs to rise much more slowly than breads made with commercial yeasts.

Preheat the oven to 350° F. When the unbaked rolls are about two times their original size, it’s time to bake. Sprinkle the remaining cinnamon sugar over the top of the rolls and place them in the oven, on the center rack, to back for 30 minutes or until golden brown.

Rolls can be frosted with a powdered sugar glaze if desired.

Yield: 12 rolls

Originally posted 7/26/08

John's Zephyr Buns

My Zephyr Buns “secret” was the result of a case of carelessness. I didn’t read the recipe instructions prior to starting the mixing. I slapped everything together and noticed immediately that the un-kneaded dough was WAY too wet. Went back to the book and finally read everything. Oh, drat … one of the 3 eggs was supposed to be ON the buns – not IN them! Rather than chunk the whole mess in the trash, I went ahead and kneaded it, baked it & served it to my favorite guinea pigs. That would be y’all .

WOW, everyone liked them!

After several batches, I figured out that there are some oddities of the recipe / soft dough that warrant passing along:

• The recipe is more successful with “Better For Bread” flour; or, hard red winter wheat flour, if you can find it. This is a trade off. Cake flour would make the crumb even softer but the higher gluten “hard red” gives the soft dough enough structure to rise better. Regardless, plain old all purpose flour will work O.K. if that’s all you can get.
• Be sure to use regular yeast – not one of the quickie versions now becoming popular. “Active” is fine. That doesn’t mean “quick”.
• Ingredients (especially eggs) should be at room temperature before starting.
• At first, the dough will be so sticky that you’ll think that you’ll never get it off your hands. Therefore, I usually start out using only one hand for kneading, keeping the other hand “clean” so that I can hold the bowl and reach for a little extra flour, etc., if I need it.
• Initially, kneading might amount to squeezing the dough between your fingers (like playing with mud) for a while, until enough gluten forms for the mess to pull together into a ball that you can knead in the regular way. I usually don’t take the ball out of the mixing bowl while kneading. Just smack it around where it lies.
• Do both the first rising in and especially the bun rise in a spot that is pleasantly warm, i.e., 75 to 95F (24-35C) and draft-free. This is structurally delicate dough. It can fall, like a cake. Watch out for cold counter tops, etc. My favorite method is to take the chill off of an oven by running it only until the metal walls and racks seem warm. Then shut it off and keep the door closed while waiting a few minutes for the oven temp to equalize out. Then put the dough into the your “rising oven” and close the door. There. Bet you didn’t know that you have one of those expensive dough conditioning “proofers”. Gas ovens are way better for this than electrics, if you’re lucky enough to have one.
• Handle the risen buns VERY carefully. They’ll collapse if you slam them around.
• With the buns out on the counter (obviously,) do a long pre-heat on your oven, before doing the baking. Even wait a few minutes after the first pre-heat cycle-off occurs (flame goes out or heating element goes off). Only then, put the buns in for baking.
• Follow the baking time but watch the buns for beautiful dark tan browning. The time is only a guideline.
• Immediately out of the oven, lightly brush the bun tops with butter. Don’t use soft “spreads” because they are very high in water content and may toughen the crust rather than soften it.
• Serve warm. Eat them all. Leftovers, especially if refrigerator-cold, are icky, because of the high egg content. The crumb goes from heavenly soft when warm to “toothy” when chilled.

Funny thing: I once did the James Beard recipe, exactly as written, and the result is O.K. They are more middle-of-the-road. The crumb is not quite as much of a head-turner when warm; but, they aren’t quite as yucky as leftovers. I guess it is a trade off that you’ll have to evaluate on your own.

Serving Size: 18

Ingredients:
1 package active dry yeast
1 tablespoons warm water -- (100-115 degrees)
2 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon salt
3 whole eggs* (SEE IMPORTANT COMMENT BELOW)
2 cups all-purpose flour -- sifted
1/4 cup melted butter
1 teaspoon cool water

Soften the yeast in warm water and stir in the sugar and salt to dissolve. Proof the yeast and sugar before adding the salt.In a bowl, beat 2 of the eggs and blend in the flour. Use all 3 eggs. Then stir in the yeast mixture and melted butter. Cool the butter down below “hot” before stirring it in. Knead vigorously in the bowl with the hands, till the dough leaves the sides of the bowl and is elastic - 5minutes. Make into a ball, put in a buttered bowl, and cover with plasticwrap. Make sure the bowl is big enough that the risen dough won’t touch the plastic wrap. Let rise in a warm, draft-free place for 1 1/2 hours, or till doubled in bulk. Punch down and divide into 18 equal pieces. I pinch off “ping-pong ball” sized pieces. Roll the pieces into balls and arrange, well separated, on a buttered baking sheet. Let rise 30 minutes,or until doubled in size. Inside your new proofing cabinet. Bake in a preheated oven at 375F for 10 minutes, or until nicely browned. Brush with butter. Serve warm.
Cool on a rack.

Originally posted 1/12/08