Saturday, November 8, 2008

Baking in Monochrome

We had leftover oranges at work, so I took some home to make orange bowknots from Better Homes and Gardens. The sweet, yeast rolls will be excellent for a brunch book group tomorrow.

I basically followed the recipe, extending the rises to accommodate slow yeast (probably due to a cold house) and substituting one of the eggs for 1/4 c pumpkin puree. (I was out of eggs.) The pumpkin made the dough delightfully orange!

(Click the images for larger ones)








This recipe made me really realize how much I've grown as a baker in the past two years. The first time I made them with with a friend, the rolls tasted great but the texture was dense, and they weren't appealing cold. These...are proper, fluffy, sweet and orangey rolls. Even though the orange peels were ugly, adding suspicious dark flecks to the dough, even though a few tiny seeds slipped through the strainer, they're tasty. I don't think it's that I'm paying more attention to the recipe--I've always brought my lab technique into the kitchen--I think it's more that I have an idea of what things should be like and I take steps to correct errors before they cause issues.

Question for our tiny readership: How much do you guys appreciate process photos? We'll take them as frequently as we remember, but if it annoys you, we can refrain from posting them all. At least, I can.

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