Hello everyone! We are 10 days from Christmas, and I don’t know exactly what we’re going to be doing for our family celebration. We had 10 people for Thanksgiving, so we kept to our state’s limit, but for Christmas we’ll be just our immediate small group: the five of us who live here in this house plus my brother-in-law. The vaccines are rolling out even as I write this, and we don’t want to expose ourselves unnecessarily right as help is on the way. We’ll be sure to do a Zoom call with my sister-in-law and her husband at some point.
Anyway, I wanted to share the following with you, as if we all needed more bread! (We always need more bread.) I previously gave you a great roll recipe with oats and molasses; this one involves pumpkin, not a quick bread but a yeasted, non-sweet one. I made it for our Thanksgiving dinner and it was a big hit. (When I make it again I’ll include a picture, but I wanted to get this post out today.) I got the original recipe from the great, great food and cooking website Serious Eats. (Link is to the original recipe.) But I didn’t want to make the recipe as written, mainly because I didn’t want to use a partial can of pumpkin for it. (If you’ve read many of my recipes you already know that I refuse to do that.) The original recipe is for a regular-sized loaf of bread, so the author was limited in how much liquid she could use. However, if you do what I say to do, you’ll just make rolls. That way you don’t have to worry about the perfect rising time and you don’t have to worry about having the exact size of recipe. A regular-size can of pumpkin is 15 ounces, but the recipe calls for 12, so we’re talking 1 1/4 times the amounts for everything if we scale up. It’s not hard to do, and, as I always remind people, every loaf of bread or batch of dough is different anyway depending on the weather and the water/gluten content of the flour. Recipes that give exact amounts of flour and liquid for yeast breads completely baffle me. Cakes and other delicate baked goods are a different matter, of course. But for yeast doughs you’re always having to evaluate as you go along. If you make your doughs/breads in a bread machine, you always need to watch as it does the initial mixing to see how things look, often needing to add extra flour or water. (I’m reminded of a dear elderly lady in a former church who told me once that she didn’t like bread made in a bread machine as it always turned out dry. To which I replied, “Your dough should look like a baby’s bottom. If it doesn’t, you probably need to add more water.” She seemed a bit taken aback. Wasn’t the whole idea with a bread machine supposed to be that you just dumped everything in and walked away? Well, that’s how these machines were originally marketed, to be sure, but that take was never accurate. And I make that caveat as someone who uses her bread machine on a several-times-a-week basis, so I’m not carping. Just setting the record straight.) I’ll be sharing other recipes with you that I plan to make for our small-but-nice dinner.
Before I get to the recipe, a quick cookbook update: I’ve decided not to publish it until March, at which time I’m hoping that things will clearly be opening up for the summer COVID-wise. My thinking is that a cookbook focused primarily on party food would land with a dull thud right now but that when it has begun to look like parties are going to start happening again there will be more interest. I’m also planning to do some videos. So it’s still in the hopper. If you happen to be reading this post and you’re not a subscriber, I’d recommend that you sign up on the sidebar. That way you’ll get my ongoing posts (and I’m planning to start posting more frequently) and will also be among the very first people to find out when the cookbook is released.
Okay–on to the recipe:
Pumpkin Yeasted Rolls
In this recipe canned pumpkin puree stands in for the liquid, and there's a little bit of maple syrup for additional flavor without much sweetness. It's no more complicated than regular yeast rolls and is a great addition to a holiday table--or any other kind!
Ingredients
- 4 1/2 cups flour, all-purpose, bread, or whole wheat (with ww being the best, of course)
- 3 tablespoons gluten, optional but nice--will help with chewiness and rise. Leave out if you're using bread flour.
- 1 1/2 teaspoons table salt, or 2+ teaspoons kosher salt
- 2 teaspoons yeast, either active or instant*
- 1 15-oounce can plain pumpkin puree, not pumpkin pie filling
- 1/4 cup maple syrup, the real thing, or honey, if you don't have the syrup--please don't use pancake syrup!
- 1 egg, optional--adds nice flavor and texture--add extra flour if needed with this ingredient
- 1/4 cup, 4 tablespoons, butter or oil, pref. roasted pumpkin seed oil**
Instructions
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The easiest way to make the dough is to dump everything into your bread machine and let it go through your "regular dough" cycle. Watch it until the dough has come together to see how wet/dry it is, adding extra flour or water as needed. Alternatively you can use a stand mixer with a dough hook, mixing until dough is soft and pliable, 8-10 minutes, or you can even use a food processor, running it for around 75 seconds. A good test to see if your dough is kneaded enough is to do what's called the "windowpane" test, in which you take a small chunk of dough and stretch it out to see if it will make a thin sheet. If it just pulls apart with no adhesion, you need to knead more. You could also knead this dough by hand. If you're the sort of pioneer-y person who does this you probably have a good idea of how long a batch of dough takes. If you're not using the machine you'll need to let the dough rise for about an hour.
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Divide the dough into 12-15 portions, depending on how big you want them to be. Make the smaller ones if you're doing dinner rolls, the larger ones for sandwiches. (Can you even begin to imagine how good these would be as used for a leftover turkey-and-cranberry-sauce sandwich?) Space rolls out on a baking sheet that's been sprayed with cooking spray, spray the tops, and cover lightly with plastic wrap. Let rise while you heat the oven to 3750. They don't need to rise all that long--maybe 20 minutes.
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Bake for 12-15 minutes, flipping the baking sheet around halfway through. Cool on a rack, pile in a breadbasket, and serve.
Recipe Notes
*These two types of yeast are interchangeable. I just use the cheap Red Star Active Dry Yeast from Costco and it works fine. Apparently you shouldn't use RapidRise yeast in recipes not developed specifically for its use. I've never tried it, so I don't know.
**No need to melt the butter as long as it's soft, as it will mix right in. I've had spectacular results using roasted pumpkin-seed oil for this recipe, but it's an expensive, special-order item that I had on hand for another use. Interestingly enough, oil gives better results than butter if you want a somewhat-crisp crust. I wouldn't use olive oil for this recipe, but any neutral-flavored oil will do.
© Debi Simons