This is a guest post by my hubby nope I would say a guest recipe by him because he left it to me to write up the post. Remember the post on bread making class my hubby attended http://ooonuready.blogspot.in/2013/01/the-bread-of-life.html . He decided to try soft rolls he had learned in his class. This is is first bread we baked together and it was a pleasure watching him in the kitchen. Sunoj is a man of precision and that's something breads require. When I watch Rachel Allen show on baking she disagrees to this and bakes as if a little here and there in measurements don't matter. But I have had very bad experiences when I goofed and m hubby cannot comprehend without exact measurements. We enjoyed these rolls a lot especially Don our cat. he kept nibbling the little bits I share with him. We left the last roll out for a week and it hardened but did not go stale and Don still didn't mind nibbling. The rolls were a bit salt and I guess its because we used salted butter so kindly use cooking butter. We bought bread flour from the cooking school and I have no idea how these rolls would turn out from plain flour. We Indians always rely on All purpose flour or our popular maida for everything. The basic dictionary of flours is given below :
American flours and British equivalents:
Cake and pastry flour = soft flour
All-purpose flour = plain flour
Bread flour = strong flour, hard flour
Self-rising flour = self-raising flour
Whole-wheat flour = wholemeal flour
Cake and pastry flour = soft flour
All-purpose flour = plain flour
Bread flour = strong flour, hard flour
Self-rising flour = self-raising flour
Whole-wheat flour = wholemeal flour
Cake flour has least amount of gluten making it light. Bread needs gluten because of which when people use plain flour for breads the add gluten.Gluten gives elasticity to the dough that is required in breads and not required for cakes.Pastry flour has gluten in smaller amounts way lesser to cakes. And we often end up using our all purpose flour for every baking. To begin with the flours available to us has minimal gluten so it's safe to use it for cakes but in a class that I attended 2 ears back my teacher was skeptical of flours we get from the food chains like More and Reliance these days. So she left it to us to keep experimenting will different flours and studying the texture of our cake till we found the right one. I found the right one at Lavonne my hubby's cooking class where they sell the right kind of flour and let me tell you this matters a lot if you are interested in more than flavour. This roll however does not need gluten and can be made using all purpose flour though we used bread flour.
Ingredients for Soft roll
Flour- 125 gm
Sugar- 18 gm
Salt- 2.5 gm
Yeast- 7gm
Butter- 13 gm
Water- 63 gm
Eggs- 15gm
Directions
Scale all the ingredients separately. This is very important. I have a weighing scale and my hubby was strict with his measurements.. Place the bread flour on a working table and make a dent in the centre of the flour. Activate the yeast with 18 gm sugar and 20 gm of water. Add this mixture along with the eggs to the dent and start kneading. Add water and knead well before adding the salt. Once the dough has softened add butter and knead again till the dough is elastic. When the dough is ready measure each ball of 30 gm and make knots as shown in the image. Place the knots in a greased tray and leave it to proof. Proofing means to let the dough rise. Once the knots double in size glaze them with an egg wash.
Egg wash is a mixture of egg and sugar and gives the baked good a red tint. Bake the rolls at 180 degrees till they turn golden brown. Once baked remove from oven and brush with some melted butter.
Note: I used some sesame seeds after the egg wash you are free to use any seeds of your choice or omit this.
Hope the bread lovers out there will
like this recipe. I used my new cam gopro for the pics and hence the are
a bit hazy, I regret not using my regular cam so kindly bear with the
pics.
