I have been meaning to blog this recipe for ooh, over a year. That is bad. I know. But it just never felt like the right time. And now, it being bread week on The Great British Bake Off, well, it feels just about the perfect time. READ MORE
I’ve not been well. Nothing quantifiable, just feeling tired all the time, run down; spent.
So I made bread rolls. That’s what works for me. Regular over the counter remedies never quite hit the spot. There’s something therapeutic about all the kneading and cutting and forming of rolls. It makes me feel wholesome. The end result is of course the true therapy. A springy poppy seed studded roll with the nuttiness of spelt and the depth of rye. This is a roll to feel good about. It’ll cleanse from the inside out. I enjoyed mine with my new favourite filling; houmous, grated carrot, a splash of orange juice and pomegranate seeds. Positively medicinal.
Lots of great recipes like this in my book, Recipes from a Normal Mum, out now… on Amazon, The Works, at Waterstones, WHSmith, The Book Depository and many smaller outlets.
Last year: Chocolate and banana flower shaped cupcakes, Subtle coconut rolls, Easy chocolate cupcakes and Chocolate orange tea buns. Oh and I almost forgot my Almond and fig granola.
Two years ago: Love cupcakes and White chocolate, lemon and macadamia cake and Roasted celeriac, carrot and parsnip soup and My lightest Yorkshire puddings.
Three years ago: Bake me not chocolate cake and Jelly and ice-cream meringue roulade and Good flapjack and Banana, butterscotch and fig traybake.
Four years ago: Treasure hunt ice-cream and Rhubarb and ginger chutney and Carrot cake.
Rye, spelt & poppy seed rolls
Makes 16 rolls though depends on how large you make them.
Ingredients:
Mix together the two flours, poppy seeds, salt and yeast in a large bowl. Take 450mls lukewarm tap water and mix in the oil then add to the flour gradually, mixing with a metal spoon as you go until you have what is often called ‘a shaggy mess’ on your hands. Word of warning; the type of flour you use (brand, age etc) affects how much water will be absorbed so you may need all of it or you may need more. I know these kind of instructions in recipes are annoying, but I promise you that you’ll know if there’s not enough as there will be areas of flour that are still dry and unable to mix in. You are looking for a soft, shaggy mess of a dough. Cover the dough in the bowl with clingfilm and leave for 5 minutes. (This really helps reduce the amount of kneading later).
After 5 minutes take a little olive oil and grease the work surface and your hands. Tip the dough onto the work surface and knead until elastic and starting to feel smooth. This takes about 10 minutes by hand and 3 – 4 using a dough hook with a stand mixer. Place the dough back in the bowl, cover with clingfilm and leave at room temperature to prove until the dough has doubled in size. Beware that spelt flour proves faster than regular strong white flour so keep an eye on it. The warmer the environment the faster the prove; so this could take as little as 25 minutes.
Sprinkle a couple of baking trays with spelt flour. Knock the dough back once it’s doubled by tipping onto a work surface and pressing the air out of it with your hands. Cut the dough into 16 even sized pieces (either weigh the dough and divide by 16 or cut the dough in half, then half again, then each piece into quarters). Roll the dough into balls using well floured hands and place onto the baking tray about 1cm apart. Repeat until all the dough is used up, sprinkle with flour and cover with clingfilm. Leave to prove until they are doubled in size (the rolls will be touching once proved) and bake in a preheated oven at 220°C/Gas Mark 7 for about 15 minutes until well risen, golden brown and smelling divine. Remove from the tray and cool on a wire rack. Then tear the rolls apart for that very professional baker look and eat with lots of salted butter and fillings of your choice. Or freeze. They freeze really well for up to a month. Make sure you use freezer bags and think about slicing them pre freezing so you can make simply filled packed lunches with the frozen rolls. (Don’t put salad stuff next to frozen bread as it goes all mushy).
NB: If you don’t have spelt flour or can’t find it then use strong white flour instead. The proving will take a little longer though. I would advise against using 100% rye flour as the loaf will be very dense. Poppy seeds can be left out if you wish or substituted with something else – other seeds, fresh rosemary, nuts, finely chopped sundried tomatoes etc).
My youngest son has just learn to say ‘I love you.’ So of course, like with any new skill learnt, he wants to practice it again and again. So it’s ‘I love you Mummy’ and ‘I love my Daddy’ and ‘I love you Charlie’ at least 50 times a day. That’s a conservative estimate. I feel loved. We all do. We’re basking in a halo of love and hugs.
Until this morning when the very same youngest son proclaimed his usual morning affection, ‘I love you Mummy’ followed by ‘…and Thomas and Harold and Cbeebies.’ So maybe the definition of love for him is a little bit skewed. Or maybe the Thomas the Tank Engine characters have been elevated to the same status as Mummy and Daddy and Big Brother and Cbeebies. The third parent in every house as we all know.
These rye rolls are most lovable – they’re doing you a bit of good I imagine from their rye flour content but they’re not so rye influenced that they break your teeth or make you feel like making your own yoghurt. If you’re into rye then there’s another recipe here to check out.
Comments, as always, welcomed.
One year ago: Baileys chocolate fridge cake truffles and Experimental banana loaf
Two years ago: Cherry, white choc and apricot biscuits and Reeses’ inspired chocolate and peanut tart
Rye rolls
Mix all of the ingredients together and leave for 5 minutes (this makes kneading a lot easier.) Then either knead by hand or in a stand mixer with the dough hook until smooth and elastic. A dough scraper is most useful if you are kneading by hand as you really shouldn’t add any more flour. The scraper is good for scraping down the work surface and removing any stragglers of dough. Use oil on your hands and work surface is the stickiness really bothers you.
Pop the dough into a large bowl and cover with clingfilm or a shower cap. Then leave to rise until double the size. Knock the dough back gently with your hands – you’re just deflating it. Then cut off pieces of dough and form into balls to make each roll. Mine were rather large – about 7cm across before the second proof. Once formed and all placed on a flour sprinkled baking sheet with 2cm between each roll, cover with a sprinkling of flour and then pop clingfilm loosely on the top.
Leave to proof until double the size (they will touch each other once proofed – this means you get that delightful effect where the rolls can be torn away from each other once baked.) Then slash with a very sharp knife, about 1cm deep across each roll and bake in a preheated oven at 200C/Gas 6 until golden brown and the bottoms sound hollow when tapped – took about 20 minutes in my oven. Leave to cool on a wire rack, off the baking sheet.
I did a bad thing this morning. I threw away a Thomas the Tank Engine bowl. I was trying to prove a point. It was the age old ‘there are children dying in the world and you won’t even eat your Cheerios’ speech when some strange urge came over me and I found myself throwing the uneaten cereal and the bowl into the bin. I didn’t actually mean to throw both away but given the flourish with which I executed the manoeuvre I felt I had to follow through. Like I meant to do it. So now my sons think their mother is crazy. Not crazy-good, crazy-bad.
To make everything better I took them to the zoo in the afternoon and spent £3 each on plastic crocodiles. The plastic Thomas bowl is forgotten and all is well in the world.
These Bounty bread rolls are possibly one of my favourite creations ever. Charlie prefers these over Cheerios for breakfast any day. They take ages though. I warn you now, they proof at their rate and nothing is going to speed them up. Weekend breakfast perhaps?
Makes 1 cake tin of rolls – about 8 individual rolls when pulled apart
Ingredients
Dough:
125g full fat or semi skimmed milk
250g strong white flour
1 tsp fast action dried yeast
1 tsp salt
20g muscavado sugar
1 large egg, beaten, at room temperature
Filling and topping:
25g demerara sugar
100g finely chopped Bounty bars (I used cheapo version from Aldi)
2 tsp icing sugar
tiny dot of boiling water
Make the enriched dough first (for it has an egg in it and butter too – so it’s enriched and therefore rises a bit slower and is also a bit sticky) by heating the butter in a saucepan/microwave until it’s melted, then adding the milk and heating until the whole lot is the temperature of a baby’s bath – ie/ lukewarm. If it overheats this is fine – just let it cool down before you add it to the dry ingredients.
Mix the flour, yeast, salt and sugar together. If the sugar has clumped up in storage then make sure you break it up finely before adding to the other dry ingredients. Use your fingers or a knife to get it back to it’s usual fine self. Then add the lukewarm butter and sugar mixture, knead together a little, then add the room temperature beaten egg. Knead by hand or in a machine until the dough is elastic, though beware it will still be sticky. Don’t add flour to aid the kneading – the bread will end up brick-like. Just go with the stickiness and remove jewellery beforehand if it really bothers you. (A scraper is very useful for kneading sticky doughs… or a machine.)
Pop the dough into a large bowl and cover with clingfilm. Let it proof until a finger pushed in about 3cm leaves a firm indent. It should be about double the size and take about 1.5 hours. In that time you need to line a cake tin (approx 20cm) with greaseproof paper as these rolls go all sticky upon baking. So sticky they can get stuck in a tin.
After the first proof knock the dough back and then roll with a rolling pin into a rectangle about 25 x 18cm, between two pieces of greaseproof paper (like I said, it’s very sticky dough so I wouldn’t attempt without the greaseproof paper trick.) With the rectangle length-ways in front of you, peel back the top layer of the greaseproof paper and then use a pastry brush to paint with the melted butter. Sprinkle the demerara sugar and chopped up Bounty over the top, evenly, then roll into a spiral, length ways.
With your roll of dough resting on the bottom piece of greaseproof paper as a disposable cutting board, use a serrated knife to cut slices of the dough about 2cm thick. Carefully lift the spirals (which are prone to dropping filling, beware) and place in your lined cake tin. Cover loosely with clingfilm and leave to proof for a second time. Mine took 2 hours to double in size.
Bake at 200C for about 20 – 25 minutes until golden brown on the top and looking thoroughly well baked, chocolatey and with toasted Bounty coconut having splurged onto the top. Mix the icing sugar with a dot of boiling water and paint the still warm rolls for a nicely frosted when cold appearance.
Once when I was 3 I walked into a coffee table. Instead of crying and running for a cuddle I hit the table. I think that says a lot about the kind of person I am. So when I found something really hard at work recently, instead of gently and calmly trying to work things out I got really angry with myself and, given the problem was with me, psychologically beat myself up. I draw the line at hitting myself physically.
These little lemon and almond rolls and what I baked after a very bad day. The smell cheered me up instantly. They taste fresh and sweet and a little bit wholesome all in one.
Makes two circles of rolls and a couple of extra singletons.
Ingredients:
For the dough:
– 500g strong white flour
– 7g active dried yeast sachet
– 2 tsp salt
– 1 tsp caster sugar
– 30g very soft butter
– 100mls cold milk (full or semi)
– 100mls cold water
– 100mls boiling water
– zest of one lemon
For the filling:
– zest of 1 lemon
– 4 tbsp demerara sugar
– 2 tbsp ground almonds
– 1 tbsp melted butter
For the topping:
– 1 egg beaten with a pinch of salt
– juice of 1 lemon
– icing sugar (about 150g)
– a handful of flaked almonds
Make the dough by mixing the flour, yeast, salt, sugar and very soft butter together. Then take the milk, cold water and boiling water, mix in one jug and then pour into the dry ingredients. Knead until smooth and elastic then cover with clingfilm and allow to proof for about an hour, until the dough has doubled in size and when you push a finger 3cm into the dough, the indent remains.
Whilst the proofing is going on, make the egg wash for the topping by beating an egg with a pinch of salt. Set this aside. Then make the filling by mixing the lemon zest, demerara sugar and the ground almonds. Set this aside too. Melt the butter, use a brush to grease 2 x cake tins and set aside the rest of the butter.
Once the dough has proofed, add the zest of one lemon to the dough and knead again until combined. Then take the dough and fashion into a sausage on a very lightly floured work surface. Then roll out into an oblong measuring about 20cm x 30cm. You may need to pull and squash and tease the dough to do this. Then brush the melted butter over the whole of the slab of dough, then evenly cover it with the filling. Now you need to work quickly as you don’t want the dough to start puffing up and proofing whilst you’re rolling. So roll the dough tightly lengthways so that you have a roll of dough that’s 30cm long. Then use a sharp serrated knife to cut 1cm slices of the roll.
Lay each slice into your cake tin, almost touching each other, with one in the middle. I got 7 in one cake tin, 8 in another and then three little stray ones on a separate tray. See what works with your tray – just make sure they almost touch. Cover with clingfilm and leave to proof for about 40 – 50 minutes until the rolls have doubled in size and are all puffed up and snuggled next to each other. Preheat the oven to 200C after about half an hour of proofing.
Brush the tops of the rolls with the egg wash and then bake in the middle of the oven until golden brown and lemony smelling. This took about 20 minutes in my oven. I took them out of their cake tins towards the end and gave them a quick 5 minute blast baking directly onto the rack. Just to make the underneath really crisp and well-baked.
Once baked remove from the oven, remove from the tins if you haven’t already and cool on a wire rack. Make the icing by mixing icing sugar with the juice of once lemon. Totally up to you how stiff you like the lemon glace icing. I like mine quite thick so spooned it on whilst the rolls were still warm and scattered with some flaked almonds.
These were supposed to be for breakfast but I admit we did eat one each straight from the oven. There’s something really wholesome about lemony baked goods!
Holly Bell 