Whole Wheat Rolls

These are the best whole wheat rolls I have ever tasted! Everyday I make a batch to share with my neighbors, the gals I visit teach, a friend who I may be seeing that day, anyone! This is something I can do well that is sharable (does that make sense? Something that gives me a little self confidence and helps me feel like I make a difference in someone's life.) After making thousands of rolls in my lifetime I have found a recipe to stick with for success.

Thanks to Mom2my9 for sharing her talents, ideas and research (she found the recipe at http://www.allrecipes.com/) Be sure to check out all of her blog. How she has time to maintain such a delightful blog, be a fulltime mother and wife, plus her other activities is a mystery to me?! (Obviously, she hasn't hit the big 50th and beyoooond birthday yet, when taking an afternoon nap is no longer considered a punishment but rather the greatest gift to receive! But then again she does have twins. I'm a twin so any mother of twins is an angel in my book. My mother was very fortunate to have three older daughters and two older sons, plus her mother to help out with two bundles of joy!)
11th Heaven's Homemaking Haven: The Best Ever 100% Whole Wheat Dinner Rolls.

If you want a quick link, click above for the recipe, BUT if you want to see what it's like making bread at my house then follow the recipe below!

I doubled the recipe and always use my Bosch Mixer when making bread - cuz I'm over 50 years old!
Whole Wheat Rolls
2 scant tablespoons active dry yeast
3 cups warm water (110 degrees F)
1 cup white sugar
2 teaspoons salt
1/2 cup butter, melted and cooled
2 eggs, beaten
8 to 10 cups whole wheat flour
DIRECTIONS
In mixing bowl, sprinkle yeast and 1 tablespoon of the white sugar over the warm water. Let stand until real bubbly, about 30 - 60 minutes works best for me.
Uh...oh...just talked to my brilliant twin again! She said if I use instant yeast I can add it right in with the dry ingredients. After quickly checking my package I found I have active dry yeast. Then I had to research the difference! According to http://www.allrecipes.com/ this is how to proof your yeast. (Sprinkle the yeast over warm water (105-115 degrees F) and a pinch of sugar, and let it stand for 10 minutes until creamy and bubbly.) So I'm using the right process but I need to reduce my yeast in the above recipe to about 5 tsps, proofing it with only a big pinch of sugar! Guess who will be mixing up a batch of bread tomorrow? I'm getting smarter every day simply because I posted my bread making endeavors.

At this point I turn on the mixer and proceed to add the remainder of the sugar, salt, melted butter, and eggs into the yeast mixture. With the mixer still running I begin to add the wheat flour, 1/2 cup at a time, until dough pulls away from the sides of the bowl.

Somewhere in there I turn the speed up a notch for less pull on the Bosch's motor. I really don't know how much flour I use, but watch very carefully for when the dough leaves the sides of the bowl almost clean. I let the machine keep kneading for about five minutes. You are going to hate me for this, but it gets a certain look or feel to the dough and I just know when it's done. Kind of like my grandma's recipes: a pinch of this and a dash of that. My sister always kneads her dough in the Bosch exactly 8 minutes whether it be pizza, bread or rolls, but mine turns out too tough if I let it go that long. Get to know your mixer....when mine bites the dust I'll have to re-configure my estimates.
My twin just told me that she now kneads some of her dough for only about six minutes. She takes a bit between her fingers and stretches it out. If it makes cathedral windows and stretches nicely it's ready, but if it breaks quickly it "kneads" more kneading!

Dough that has too much flour is tough and dough with not enough flour sticks like glue to your hands as you mold the rolls. It's practice and experimenting over and over and over. I have tried recipe after recipe for years to find one I like this much! They work well for months, but when I stop making bread for awhile then go back to that recipe it just doesn't turn out the same! I'm still perfecting a yummy soft white dough recipe, but after tasting the delicious wheat flavor of these rolls who wants to return to white flour!

So.....after machine kneading for the appropriate length of time I turn the dough out into a well buttered large bowl, turning under the sides to make the pile of dough pretty and smooth (like a baby's bottom is the only way I know how to describe the look.) Then I butter the top with melted butter using my fingers. Sometimes when I cover the dough with a damp towel it sticks to the dough so I make sure the top is buttered well so it won't dry out. My favorite place to let the dough rise is in my oven with the oven light turned on and the door shut. No heat except from the light. Let rise until doubled or tripled in size, about 1-3 hours. With the recipe doubled it seems to take longer to rise. Sometimes my kitchen is warm (in the summer) and sometimes it's really cold (like tonight when I've already turned the heater off as everyone is in bed sleeping, except for the bread maker!)
Again, as I was talking to my twin today she was appalled at the length of time it takes me to make bread! Remember she is the impatient twin (I was born fifty-two minutes before her and all my life she's been right behind me pushing me to hurry up!) She gave me a mini physics lesson on bread making and kneading with the Bosch mixer. If I use the Bosch there is NO REASON to let the dough rise once in the bowl before forming the rolls and then again before cooking. My twin said to shape the rolls and put them directly into the pans after the eight minute kneading time. Oh, boy! Naturally I had to try it right after our phone call. The rolls were done so quickly that my timing for the day was way off! While picking up a set of kids at one school the bunch of kids (boys) from the other school who were already at home had to placed in charge of removing the baked rolls from the oven. There were no complaints that their play was being interrupted, but they did ask how many they could eat while I was gone! So now I skip the first rising and go directly to forming the rolls as described below.

Butter four pie tins, sides and bottom. Then pull off a hunk of dough a little smaller than the size of a tennis ball to form into the shape of a ball. I keep tucking the edges under until it forms a smooth little ball of dough. Actually I bring the edges up and poke them into the middle of the ball, kind of like how my grandma kneaded the whole mess of dough before we had bread makers or mixers. Remember to not overwork the dough AND always knead in the same direction to keep the rolls smooth and light!

One roll is placed in the middle of the pie tin and 6 or 7 around the sides forming a circle. If they are too big they rise and bake right over the edge of the pan. Oh, I've learned lots of success tricks over the years by the simple method of elimination. Eliminate the methods that absolutely do NOT work, that cause you to grind up the entire cooked batch of bread in your food processor to use later as bread crumbs. There was the night I had gone to Relief Society activity night and left my yeast happily bubbling in the bowl. Much later I added the other ingredients, kneaded well and placed the bowl in the frig overnight. Next day I let it rise again, formed beautiful pans of rolls, cooked them up until tasty brown and just had to taste the first hot roll from the oven. Quickly I was spewing the contents of my mouth into the sink. I don't know what over-worked yeast tastes like but these rolls were nasty! Alas, I always taste the dough before rolling into the little balls to make sure all is in order before putting forth more hard work!

Finally brush the tops of the rolls with melted butter. Let rise uncovered in a warm place, I use my oven light again 40 minutes, or until doubled in bulk.
I set a timer to remind me to check the rolls in 30 minutes and then again as necessary. Now that I don't let them rise once at the beginning they rise much quicker! My grandma let her dough raise several times in the olden days which made them softer and fluffier. Letting my dough rise too high and too many times was killing my bread. UGH! Well, it tasted good and I thought they were okay, but now they are really yummy okay! Thanks to my twin, the scientist...she is soooo smart. She may have got all the brains, but I GOT stuff she didn't get. (Blow raspberries here....neener, neener, neener!) I got to get a retainer for my teeth because I sucked my thumb. I got to get glasses in 7th grade and contacts in 9th grade and laser surgery decades later. I got to be the brunette and she has to be blonde like all the other gals (real and from the bottle) in the world, how boring! I got the extra love handles so that my husband has more to love! I get to be the late bloomer in every area of our lives, so that she has to keep pushing me to hurry up all the time. Poor twin, I'm so sorry, but I really enjoy the kickback life style we enjoy here. All good things come to those who wait!

Now it's time to cook! Preheat your oven to 400 degrees F and bake for 12 to 15 minutes, or until golden brown. This is the tricky part! Get to know your oven and how it works for you! I have a convection oven and place two pie tins at the back of an upper rack and two pie tins at the front of a lower rack. They get even heat exposure, but take 20 minutes to bake in my oven! Could be the large size of the roll, could be too much in the oven, could be because the oven automatically converts the baking temperature to 375 degrees for convection. I really don't know!
I only took one semester of chemistry because I was sooooo awful at lab time. Fortunately my brilliant twin sister, the chemistry whiz of the school, was my lab partner. The lab DIDN'T burn down after I set the bunson burner on fire, nor did I have to go to the hospital when I inhaled the ammonia we had just made, noooo...the teacher just strongly suggested that at the end of the semester I LEAVE! Typing (back then it was old fashioned typewriters, not even electric ones yet) was more suited to my needs. English courses were my most favorite; short story writing, children's literature, contempory fiction, poetry....all sorts of choices.

When I remove the rolls from the oven I turn them out onto a wire rack, but flip them back over right side up to keep them from looking squooshed. Be careful turning to keep them together in a pretty ring. When cooled place in a gallon size ziploc bag. If it was a nice sunny day and your dough seemed to rise more than usual you may have to sqeeeeeeze them a tiny bit more to get them past the zipper of the bag. I kind of roll them in like a wheel turning. If your baggie gets moisture at the top don't zip the bag until they cool a bit more. ALWAYS allow one ring of rolls to fall apart as you place them on the wire rack. Those are the ones the family gets to eat right now! They also know which ones they can eat and which ones are for giving away (the pretty ones.) Unless you have a stinker who decides to pull one roll from each pretty ring so that you can't give ANY away that day. What can I say? My family loves these rolls better than bread in a loaf and they don't even like whole wheat! Go figure! AND always, always, always use real salted butter when sampling. My dad, once a dairyman, would never let us eat margerine and I don't think any of us do to this day. We learned well! His favorite line to use on us? "Be smarter than the cows!"

We have cut our salt intake hugely, but recently discovered Redmond Real Salt from Utah. I love it and we don't have the swelling problems regular salt causes. Do your home work on-line and read how regular salt that we buy at the store, which is found in every food we consume, is harming us. I have found sodium free bouillon (Herb-Ox and Wyler's make granules as well as cubes, but granules are easier to work with to make broth, etc.) in various grocery stores. We eat salt free tortilla chips. We buy no salt added tomato sauce and also low sodium baking powder. Sodium reduced soy sauce is available to buy, but I also have a recipe to make my own. These days I cook everything from scratch, to eliminate preservatives, sodium, and all the other additives that are messing with our bodies! The rolls are now cool enough to put away for the night.....so we'll save the rest of the story for later.