Top 100 Cake Blog

Top 100 Cake Blog
Showing posts with label yeast. Show all posts
Showing posts with label yeast. Show all posts

Sunday, October 28, 2012

Hurricane Sandy Hot Rolls


As Frankenstorm moves up the northeast coast and you're battling the onslaught of both high winds and media hype (a different kind of wind altogether), I suppose it's best to be prepared, just in case.  So after you've purchased water, dusted off your flashlight, and hunkered in for the duration, why not make rolls?


Stormy weather is perfect for homemade soup and there's no better accompaniment than old-fashioned dinner rolls, pulled from the oven and buttered while still warm.  Rolls are ideal to make during a storm: First, chances are you're stuck at home for hours, and the low barometric pressure will allow the dough to rise more easily (it has less air to "push" against).  Plus, as with all bread making, there's very little actual work, and a lot of waiting around, so you can watch Lena Dunham's Tiny Furniture (currently available on the Sundance channel on Free Movies on Demand) while feeling a sense of accomplishment as your dough rises in the kitchen.

Only good things can come from melting butter and sugar in sweet milk, the start of this recipe.


A "sponge" is made first, left to rise, and then a second, smaller batch of flour is added before the bread is kneaded.


Form the dough into balls and let rise in the pan.



A more beautiful and shapely roll can be made by using a muffin tin, rather than the free-range method above.



I made just half of this recipe, and used butter instead of shortening.  I also used dry yeast (about 2 1/4 teaspoons, or the equivalent of one package).  These rolls could be improved with a bit more salt (and by spreading them with salted butter). You can certainly make the entire amount, as these are meant to be refrigerator rolls, i.e., kept in the fridge until you need to make them.



Sunday, March 18, 2012

Desperate Mother Shoplifts a Jar of Yeast

Denis Hamill had a wonderful column in today's New York Daily News about Margaret Deming, a mother of six arrested for shoplifting three pounds of cold cuts and a jar of yeast so she could bake bread to feed her hungry children.

That the desperate mother stole yeast, and not a loaf of bread, made the story more powerful to me (and to newspaper editors, too, judging by how they featured this fact so prominently).  It's like she took the tool (or, in this case, the ingredient) she needed to survive. A loaf of bread would have been devoured in a day, but the yeast could be used to make many loaves. A twist on the saying: "Give a man a fish, you'll feed him for a day; teach a man to fish you'll feed him for a lifetime."  In this case, Deming knew how to fish, she just didn't have any bait.

The heartbreaking story has a happy ending: After Hamill wrote about her plight in February, a noted criminal defense attorney took her case pro bono and Daily News readers donated food and money.  In the end, her punishment was one day of community service.  More importantly, she was connected to the social services she needs to get back on her feet.  (Deming, like many poor New Yorkers, was living on the edge.  When both she and her husband lost their jobs and their apartment, she had few options and, not having a permanent address, was unable to get food stamps.)

Sometimes, it's the level of detail that makes the bread rise, and a story jump off the page.