Category: Breads and Pancakes

Simple Dinner Rolls

Most of the time, Mom didn’t use a special dough to make dinner rolls. Her standard bread recipe made enough dough for four loaves, and she often made only three loaves of bread and a pan of rolls for dinner or a batch of dough gods for an after-school snack for us kids.

You can follow my mother’s example by making a batch of Homestyle White Bread (LINK) to make a loaf of bread and a pan of rolls or just do this. The egg yolk gives these rolls a lovely golden tint and a more tender crumb than Mom’s rolls.

INGREDIENTS:

1/2 cup water
2 tsp. active dry yeast (or 1 package)
1 cup milk
1 1/2 T sugar
1 1/2 T butter
1 tsp. salt
1 large egg, divided
3 – 3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

PROCEDURE:

As with all bread baking, start by scrubbing your hands well.

Put one-half cup warm water (90º to 110º) in a cup with a quarter teaspoon of sugar and stir in the yeast. While the yeast is proofing, warm the milk to about 110º and pour it into a large bowl. Stir in the salt and sugar. Melt the butter and add it to the milk. Separate the egg and reserve the white. Stir the yolk into the batter.

Stir in the flour one cup at a time, beating thoroughly between additions. After you have stirred in the first cup, mix in the yeast. Continue adding flour one cup at a time until the dough becomes stiff and begins to pull away from the sides of the bowl.

Let the dough rest in the bowl for five minutes, then scrape it out onto a well-floured work surface with a spatula and use the spatula to turn the dough to coat it with flour before starting to knead it. Powder your hands with flour, and knead the dough until it is smooth and satiny, about four to five minutes.

If you have never kneaded dough, you should check out Wikihow.com for an excellent lesson on kneading or go to Thekitchn.com for a good video showing you how to do it. Actually, doing both is a good idea. Just go to the sites and use the search for “knead dough.”

Return the dough to a greased bowl, roll it to cover the surface lightly with grease, and cover the bowl with a damp towel. Put the bowl in a warm spot in the kitchen (I use the top of the refrigerator) and let the dough rise until it has doubled in bulk, usually an hour or a little more.

Butter a nine by thirteen-inch cake pan while the dough is rising. Turn the dough out of the bowl onto a lightly floured work surface, punch it down and knead it five or six strokes. Pat it down to about an inch thick and use a knife or baker’s scraper to divide the dough into twelve to fifteen pieces.

Roll the pieces into balls about the size of walnuts, put them about an inch apart in the buttered pan and cover them with a damp towel.

Preheat the oven to 350º when the rolls have nearly doubled in size. Beat the reserved egg white with a teaspoon of cold water and paint the tops of the rolls before putting them into the oven. Bake twenty-three to twenty-six minutes until they are lightly browned.

NOTES: These dinner rolls are best eaten warm from the oven. If necessary you can warm them at low power in the microwave for a few seconds.

Whole Wheat Banana Pancakes

Bananas were a special treat for us kids when I was growing up, so special that I tried to save a small banana that was the hot lunch dessert one day. I tucked it into my jeans pocket to take it home. After lunch I joined a bunch of guys in a softball game. As fate would have it, a line drive hit the banana pocket. I learned two important things from this event: First, bananas are pretty effective softball shock absorbers and second, removing a smashed banana from a pocket is a challenge.

I excused myself from the game and went to the boys’ bathroom where I discovered that I would have to take off my jeans, turn the pocket inside out and wash the offending mush away. The warning bell for afternoon classes rang while I was doing this, so about twenty guys came into the room to find me in my shorts scrubbing my pants in the lavatory.

They were not as amused as the girls in my class when I walked in with a big wet spot on the front of my jeans. Mrs. Coogan was very nice and did not quiz me about the matter, though she did look startled as I carefully walked to my desk near the front of the classroom.

And then I had to ride the bus home, accompanied by laughter and the odor of ripe bananas. My mother sympathized philosophically, “I’m sorry, but I hope you learned your lesson.” I did. I have never put a banana in a pocket again.

In spite of this embarrassing episode, I still thought well of bananas because we had them only once in a while. They were almost always available at the Co-op or A & P but they were expensive. When young people look at old supermarket advertisements and see bananas for fifteen cents a pound, they may wish bananas were that cheap today.

Adjusted for inflation, however, bananas actually cost less now than they did when I was a kid. Fifteen cents in 1950 is the same as $1.50 today, so sixty cents a pound is a real bargain. Mom bought bananas only when they were on sale for ten or twelve cents a pound. Every once in a while she would use a couple of bananas to make banana pancakes. They were her regular thin pancakes with slices of bananas baked into them, but we thought that they were extra good.

I like to use some whole wheat flour in my recipe. The whole wheat gives the pancakes a slightly nutty flavor that I think makes them taste even better. And just think, you can buy the bananas for less than half the price Mom paid!

INGREDIENTS:

1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup whole wheat flour
1 tsp. salt
1 T baking powder
2 T sugar
2 large eggs
2 cups milk (approximately)
2 T vegetable oil plus more for frying the cakes
2 medium bananas

PROCEDURE:

Use a fork to mix the flours, salt, baking powder and sugar together in a bowl. Stir in the milk, eggs and oil and mix until you have a batter. Don’t worry about a few small lumps. If the batter is too thick to pour, add a little more milk. If it is too thin, add a little more flour.

Heat a skillet or griddle over moderate heat. Spread a half teaspoon of oil on the surface of the pan. When a drop of water sizzles as it hits the surface, the pan is ready.

Pour or ladle a fourth or third of a cup of batter onto the pan and spread it to a five to eight-inch circle.Banana Pancake cooking Cut four to six thin rounds of banana on top of the batter. Cook each cake until bubbles start forming in the center and the edges are dry. Turn and brown it for a minute or two on the other side.

Continue with the rest of the batter, greasing the pan very lightly after each cake is done if necessary, until you have enough pancakes for everyone. Leftover cakes can be warmed next day in the microwave.

Serve with maple syrup, butter and bacon or sausage for a real Wisconsin breakfast.

NOTES: You can make oatmeal banana pancakes the same way, and they are delicious. I discovered this at the cabin when we didn’t have any whole wheat flour. We now enjoy them for breakfast occasionally at home as well. Just use the recipe for Easy Oatmeal Pancakes and slice the bananas on the cakes.