If you’ve read more than a couple of posts here at the Garden Deli, you might have noticed that I like baking bread – love it in fact. Luckily my family are pretty tolerant of my bread baking obsession, and generally eat the loaves I turn out of our oven. Most times the bread I bake is OK – at least better than the plastic wrapped supermarket bread we used to buy. But then there are some loaves that just aren’t as good as I would have hoped – spongy textured or missing in flavour. Very occasionally I pull a loaf from the oven that tastes absolutely fantastic – trouble is I’m never sure what went right and how to replicate these successes.
So I’ve decided I need to learn more about the whole bread baking process. I’m hoping that the more I know about how the ingredients react to kneading, proving and knocking back the more consistent my bread making will be. I’m re-reading the first chapters in my favourite baking book, and am thinking about taking a bread making course of some kind. I’m also going to start joining in with the Twelve Loaves bread making challenge. This is a great idea, hosted this month by Lora at Cake Duchess – a different theme each month and lots of recipes to inspire more baking. The theme for January is Clean Slate – simplicity after the excesses of the holiday season, so I’ve baked our favourite basic white rolls.
These bread rolls have become a weekly bake in our house – great for breakfast, packed lunches or with a bowl of soup. And the great thing is, they always turn out right – when I’ve read enough to find out why, I’ll let you know! The polenta in the dough gives a nice, slight crunch to the texture of the bread. I usually make eight large rolls with this quantity of dough, but you could make smaller rolls, or even get creative and make plaits or swirls…
White rolls with polenta
500g strong white bread flour
150g medium polenta (corn meal)
2 tsp sea salt
2tsp fast action dried yeast
about 400ml warm water
Mix the flour, polenta, salt and yeast in a large bowl. Add enough water to bring everything together into a sticky dough – it does need to be quite wet and sticky to get rolls with a good texture. Turn the dough out onto a floured board and knead for about 10 minutes. This is quite a messy job with a sticky dough, but it really is worth the mess!
Place the dough in a large bowl, cover with a damp tea towel or cling wrap and leave in a warm place to rise for about 1 hour – until the dough has doubled in size. Tip the dough out onto a board again and knock it back – spread the dough out to form a rough rectangle, fold the left third across to cover the middle third of the rectangle, then fold the right side over on top of this. Turn the dough through 90o and repeat this folding process. Put the dough back into the bowl, cover and leave to rise again. (If you’re really pushed for time, you can skip the knocking back and go straight on to shaping the rolls).
When the dough has doubled in size again, divide it into 8 equally sized pieces and shape each one into a slightly flattened ball. Place the rolls onto a greased baking sheet, and leave to rest for about 35-45 minutes. Get your oven heating so that it’s at 190oC, 375F, gas 5 when the rolls are ready for baking.
Bake the rolls for about 20 minutes – they will be a lovely golden brown and sound hollow when you tap the bottom when they are ready. It’s tempting to eat them hot from the oven with plenty of melting butter and homemade jam, but if you can leave them to cool for a short while at least, the texture will be better.
I have to admit I haven’t baked bread for years (bar pizza dough obviously), since having children to be precise! And I’ve vowed this year to get back into it, as I have a little more time than ever before. I should really join the challenge too, it sounds fun. Your rolls looks gloriously perfect and the I’m loving the addition of polenta, they’re now on lodged on my bread-making To Do list!
It can be difficult to find time for baking bread when you have young children around – although they usually enjoy shaping the dough before baking, I remember some weird and wonderful animal shapes being created a few years ago!
These rolls look perfect – I’ve not tried including semolina before. Bread-making seems to be a bit of a dark art, and part of the reason I love it – you never quite know how each bake will work out. I’m now going to look at Twelve loaves, thanks for that.
I’m really enjoying making bread but, like you say, it does have its mysteries! Hope you like Twelve loaves – there are loads of recipes there to inspire a baking session or two.
Oh these rolls are looking so good. I love bread making and am making a concerted effort to make most of my bread. I just love it and have been teaching it to lots of my students who are all now in love with fresh bread too! I love your addition of polenta, something I use regularly to dust my baking sheet with when baking pizza and of course in polenta cake. Now I will be trying it in my rolls too!
It’s great that you’re spreading the word about home baked bread! Once you start baking your own it’s hard to stop, isn’t it? I can see myself becoming a real bread bore before long!
Yum, that looks so delicious. Some butter would be awesome with fresh baked bread. Yum…..
Some homemade butter would be brilliant – I saw a great recipe for that just recently…!
haha!
These look wonderful. I’m becoming quite addicted to making little rolls, especially at weekends – I can’t resist the warm rolls and coffee combination late morning. I find rolls are a lot more forgiving too than large loaves. With a loaf I’m always wondering if the middle of a loaf is actually cooked through. Like the polenta addition.
I rely on tapping the underside of a loaf to see if it’s done – but it doesn’t always work, sometimes it sounds lovely and hollow but could have done with a bit longer in the oven… so much to learn!
Oh yes – this post touches me in all the right places – lovin’ your bread.
Thanks Elaine – next to gardening, making bread must be one of the best ways to de-stress!
There’s a magic with bread making that’s akin to gardening… sometime it works and sometime it doesn’t and very often the mood I’m in affects the dough more than I’d care to believe. I’d love to see a recipe for home made butter. Another great recipe and you’ve tempted me to get my scales out again!!
There’s a recipe for home made butter here – http://unihomemaker.com/2013/01/29/homemade-butter/ Now you can make the bread and the butter – just need the marmalade!
Great to hear you are entering more bread making challenges. I can imagine it must be quite annoying not to know what has worked so that you can replicate the success but I’m sure you will learn lots with your new project!
Your roll looks lovely with that poached egg – all that runny yolk oozing out so freely. Delicious!
Thanks Jacqueline – working out how to cook the perfect poached egg was an earlier ‘project’!