I usually try to stick to either posting healthy recipes or quick fix recipes but these bread rolls turned out so amazing that I had to share the recipe. People who have tried their hand at baking know that baking bread can be a real challenge. I’ve tried my hand at no-yeast bread recipes before and they always turned out so-so. I have been very tempted to try my hand at a yeast recipe but was too intimidated by the amount of effort involved. I finally attempted my first yeast bread recipe and it turned out so good! I baked garlic cheese bread rolls and they were delicious. I used a simple bread recipe from a food blogger involving only yeast, water, sugar, butter & all purpose flour.

INGREDIENTS:

To bake around 20-24 rolls:

• Yeast – 1 tbsp
• Water (lukewarm) – 1 & 1/4th cup
• Sugar – 2 tbsp
• Salted butter – 2 tbsp (replace with vegan butter to make the recipe vegan)
• All purpose flour – 4 cups
• Salt – 1 tsp
• Melted butter to brush the bread
• For the filling I used butter, garlic and cheese as per my taste but you can use pizza sauce, cooked meat, boiled corn or any other cooked vegetable you’d like.

STEPS (extremely detailed because I know following a recipe without a video can be a little hard):

I will be honest and say that baking bread takes time. There is a need for extreme patience especially when you’re literally just waiting for the yeast to do its work. But don’t skim on the proofing times since in the recipe I literally only proofed the dough for the minimum time.

• The first step is to dissolve the sugar in the lukewarm water. Add the yeast to this mixture, give it 1-2 mixes and let the mixture rest for about 15 minutes. This process is for activating the yeast so do keep in mind to keep the water just lukewarm (just hot enough for you to comfortably put your finger in it). The sugar helps in the activation process. You know your yeast is ready when the mixture has a lot of bubbles on the surface and you get a slight sour-ish smell of the yeast.

• While your yeast is activating – in a large mixing bowl (definitely pick a large one to make it easy to proof the dough in the same bowl later) mix together the flour, salt & butter roughly. The butter should be softened at room temperature. If you forget to leave your butter out – pop it in the microwave just till its softened (not melted).
• Once your yeast has activated, mix the yeast mixture into the flour mix. At this point the mixture is going to look like a slurry. Instead of going at it with my hands, I recommend doing the initial mixing with a spatula till the dough is starting to come together. At this point, ditch the spatula and go in with your hands. Knead the dough till you get a smooth, well combined & non sticky dough. Having tried working with such recipes a few times, I have to say that the type of flour, different weather conditions may mean that your dough is either dry or too wet. If it’s dry, add just a tiny bit of water to get it all together. If it’s wet, adding flour is the way to go but while adding flour keep in mind that too much flour will make your bread dense.
• Knead the dough for a few minutes till it comes together and then shape it into a ball. Don’t over knead the dough as it leads to a denser bread (if you’re as lazy as I am, I’m sure you won’t).

• Now comes the patience testing part – the first proofing. Take out your balled dough, lightly grease the mixing bowl and place the dough back. Place a moist kitchen towel over the mixing bowl and set aside in a warm place for one hour atleast. You can use cling wrap to cover the bowl but since I’m trying to avoid one use plastic, I’d recommed the towel.

• After an hour, go check on your dough. It should have almost doubled in size. If it hasn’t, then leave it for a little longer. If your kitchen isn’t warm enough, warm your microwave for a few seconds and then leave the dough in there.
• Once your dough has risen, take it out on a counter lightly greased with flour and shape it into a rectangle as best as you can. (Trust me mine wasn’t perfect but it worked.) You don’t want to knead it too thin because we’re baking a bread. Similarly you don’t want it to be too thick because we will proof the dough again and it will expand.

• After you’ve gotten the dough in a shape that you’re happy with, spread the toppings of your choice on it. I did a thick layer of butter followed by finely chopped garlic and grated cheese. You can make it a pizza roll and go with pizza toppings or make it a dessert roll with Nutella and choco chips.
• Once you have finished topping the bread, you need to roll it into a log. If you roll it along the shorter edge you will get more layers in your bread. If you roll it along the long edge you’ll get more rolls. So have your pick – the recipe works either way. The rolling is tricky the first time but you get the hang of it. Just roll it till you have one long bread log. If the log is thicker from the centre you can try to reshape it a little but don’t worry too much about the shape.
• Now you need to cut the log into smaller pieces. If you want to do it professionally, then use a ruler to mark out how thick you want your rolls. Otherwise use your two finger width to mark along the bread log where you want to cut it. You can use a knife or dental floss to cut the dough.

• Grease the pan that you want to bake the bread rolls in and place the rolls in circles on it. Don’t worry if they don’t cover the entire pan since we’re going to proof them again.
• Now comes the second proofing. At this point if you’re like me, you’d just want to bake the damn rolls and be done. But you need to cover them with a cloth/cling wrap again and set them aside for 30-35 mins. Preheat your oven to 180C (355 F) in the mean time.
• Once your rolls have poofed up, place them in the oven and bake them for 20-25 mins or till the top is golden brown.

• As soon as you pull it out of the oven, spread melted butter on your rolls and let them cool for 10mins. Then go head and dig into them.
• I kept them till 2 days in the fridge and they were still soft and delectable.

I’ve been baking for a few years, so I didn’t find this recipe very difficult. It just tests your patience because it takes a couple of hours to bake. But trust me it tasted amazing! My bake wasn’t perfect either and definitely looked very different from what I was aiming for. But it tasted so good that I didn’t care how it looked! This is what it should have looked like:

Do try out this recipe and let me know if you liked it. Checkout @Foodbossindia on Instagram for more delicious recipes.

Stay safe and bake on! ♥️

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