Bread and burgers

I didn't make it out for a walk yesterday and although it got very late today, I did manage to finally leave my apartment and get moving for a while. One thing I did accomplish yesterday, however, was to make the 30-minute bread rolls I read about last year on mortgagefreeinthree. Wasn't planned for yesterday really but since I hadn't managed to go out and really fancied having some bread...

Actually, when I was binge-reading the MFin3 archives last summer I ended up ordering some strong flour and some yeast online so I had everything on hand and it was time to see if the 30 minutes was realistic or not. Excuse the not-great photos - it was nearly dark outside when I was doing this. Also, need to replace one bulb in the kitchen, really should remember to do that some time.

This much took just over five minute. Boiled the kettle to get hot water then mixed half boiled water with half cold water to get the tepid temp which is needed for the yeast (excellent tip from an old Mary Berry book I have). So, flour measured and salt added to it. Yeast, sugar and water mixed in jug. Oil and egg mixed. That jug is way too small though - as soon as I'd taken the photo, I had to tip it into a bigger bowl.

After waiting the ten minutes for the yeast to activate I mixed it all up. It felt like it was going to be a far too dry mixture and I had started wondering if I'd measured the flour wrong or somehow landed on a particularly small egg before the dough actually came together. Still only took a couple of minutes though. And then I kneaded for nearly five minutes ('cos, you know, that part's fun).

And then I cut the dough into six pieces and formed rolls. And realised I should have been cutting it into twelve so had to divide each giant roll again.

 There they are. I only dusted a few of them with flour as I'm not much of a fan of that. They did turn out slightly better than the non-dusted ones, though, so perhaps next time I'll make sure to have sesame seeds on hand, which might be nice. I left them to rise for five minutes while I did the washing up, as suggested and then started on the prep for making bean burgers. They did bake in ten minutes in my oven although I need to remember that it only take my oven ten minutes to heat to the right temperature so don't really need to turn it on until I've made the dough next time.

As fast and easy as promised. And they're tasty enough, too. I'll probably adjust to make these mostly wholemeal next time round. But that won't be for a while.

I ate these for my late lunch and also for dinner yesterday and kept a couple for today (had them toasted) and tomorrow but the rest have been sliced in half and put in the freezer.

Which I thought was very restrained of me. It's probably not a bad thing that I was in the middle of cooking the burgers as it meant they had cooled down by the time I got to eating my first two rolls. So the butter only melted a little bit. Hmmm, melty butter on hot bread.

Freezer is nearly full again now. 12 burgers gone in, as well as the 5 remaining bread rolls. I'm thinking the two combined would work very well. Next time I try these rolls I might make more from the quanity of dough, as they're quite substantial, perhaps 15 instead of 12 or something like that.


And that was that. Not my most productive day ever but baking bread made it feel like I really accomplished something. :)