When the Roll Is Called Up Yonder

How to Make Rolls

I’ve been making the same Betty Crocker roll recipe with my bread machine for several years now. Rolls are one of the few things our kid will eat consistently. I’ve refined the process so that it takes as little of my limited energy as possible. They really are easy! If they weren't, I wouldn't make them! 😊 

I’ve shared the recipe with lots of people, but I thought I would document exactly how I make them for anyone who is interested.

The Ingredients (in the order they go into the bread machine pan):

           

1 cup water – Using hot tap water will give the best results. 

            

2 tablespoons butter or margarine, softened – I put two tablespoons of margarine in a coffee cup and microwave for five seconds to soften. Then, I cut it into fourths inside the cup and put in in the pan with the water.

            

1 egg – Add the egg to the water and margarine already in the pan.

3 ¼ cups flour – Use bread flour for best results.

            

¼ cup sugar – If you leave out the sugar, the rolls won’t brown.

           

1 teaspoon salt – After adding the salt, use the end of the measuring spoon to make a little pocket for the yeast. This is more important when using a delay cycle, but I still do it with this recipe. It keeps the yeast from getting into contact with the water too soon.

            

3 teaspoons yeast – I get the best results from Fleischmann’s Bread Machine Instant Yeast. 

Put the pan in the bread machine and start the dough cycle, which is an hour and thirty minutes on my machine (enough time for a quick nap 😃💤 ).

The Magic

When the dough cycle ends, put the dough on a lightly floured surface to rest for ten minutes. (I set a timer.) While the dough is resting, turn the oven on to “warm.”

After the ten minutes is up, turn the oven off. Divide the dough up into 28-30 rolls. I use a pastry blade. I grab the dough and tuck the ends under with one hand.

Put the rolls on a cookie sheet covered with a sheet of parchment paper.

Put a clean dish towel over the rolls and put them in the oven (which is still off). Set a timer for 30 minutes and let those little yeasties burp some more.

 After the timer goes off, you’ll have big, beautiful rolls that are ready to bake. Take off the towel, turn the oven on 375, and set a timer for 13 minutes. The oven will be preheated about halfway through, which is okay.

When the timer goes off, you’ll have big, beautiful, golden brown rolls!

After you take them out of the oven, pull them off them pan with the parchment paper onto a wire cooling rack.

Freeze any rolls you aren’t planning to serve in the next day or so.

Thank you, TrixieTracker

At three years and .5 months, we've decided to suspend our subscription to TrixieTracker.com. However, for the past six subscription cycles, it's been well worth it. We have tracked:

• 5336 Diapers
• 3208 sleep periods (most not naps)
• 1875 bottles
• 1113 meals
• 2016 solid foods (overlaps with the meals)
• 1002 Medicine dosages (whoa! Of course, he was on lots of different things for reflux when he was tiny.)
• and much, much more.

The big thing that TrixieTracker does is make you sane. When your child gets you up at 2:00 a.m. and you don't remember what he did in his last diaper, or what his temperature was, or what he ate last... boom, it's there. Now that Adam is pretty verbal, sleeping all night, and approaching potty training (although still not there yet,) it's a lot easier to keep track of what's going on. But for the last three years, TrixieTracker has been indispensable. Highly recommended.

oven roasted potato wedges

Adapted from this recipe.

Hardware
Half sheet pan
Paper towels
Cutting board
Awesome knife
Aluminum foil (heavy duty preferred)
Metal balloon wisk
Medium bowl, preferably metal, to toss potatoes in
Oven preheated to 450 (475 if you're our oven)

Software
5-6 medium sized potatoes or 2-3 bakers
1-2 tbsp vegetable or olive oil
kosher salt
pepper in a grinder
onion powder
chili powder

Directions
Cover the sheet pan in aluminum foil. The only reason for this: super quick cleanup!

In the medium bowl, combine the oil, a couple of tablespoons of kosher salt, 20 grinds of pepper, a teaspoon of onion powder and a couple of dashes of chili powder (or more, if you're brave.) Wisk them all together for about 20 seconds... not too long, but just to combine.

Wash the potatoes and cut them into wedges. Pat them dry with paper towels and throw them into the medium bowl. Toss for about fifteen seconds, or until you don't see any uncoated spots. The cool thing is that tossing them will separate the wedges.

Place the wedges skin-side down onto the sheet pan, and place in the preheated oven. After 25 minutes, check to see how brown they are. When you see black edges, you're finished.

Eat.

what's for dinner?

Apparently, Paula Deen is trying to kill us all. Too bad I already planned to make a Weight Watchers recipe for dinner, because I could have made this. The bread crumbs aren't on the Core Plan. Oh well.

recent things of minor awesomeness

• Costco's super-giant pack of paper towels no longer has each individual paper towel roll shrinkwrapped for retail sale inside of a giant shrinkwrapper. I wonder what genius figured that one out. Forget the environmental benefit and savings to the manufacturer in materials and incremental shipping cost. Now I don't have to tear into one every time we run out.
  
• More flavors for Fiber One bars. Really, I love these for the taste, not just the fibery goodness (don't tell John McEnroe.)
  
• Nightshot video cameras, X10 wireless video senders, Picture-in-Picture, a PowerBook, and ustream.tv
• Scrabulous
• The fact that I have 90% of the new iPhone features when I updated my iPod Touch with the new generation of software. That never happens.
• GPS provided by Mr. T
• Google Alerts
• Thanks to twitterbook, cronjob.de, net2ftp.com, and e-rice.net, my "status" is everywhere whenever I update Facebook.
  
• Sleep

(I told you it was minor awesomeness.)

Oh, and if you're a regular AdamTV viewer, please know that he's going on summer hiatus for a little while. We'll be back to our regularly scheduled programming as soon as possible.