Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Check Out These Buns!

Or rolls, or whatever you want to call them.

This is probably nothing to you accomplished bread makers out there, but it's a big accomplishment for me. I've never been able to make beautiful and great tasting homemade rolls until now. I have watched several friends go through their favorite bread recipes step-by-step for me, but usually I was too chicken to try to attempt it myself. Finally after being told repeatedly that there was no way I could mess these up, I made my friend Marjan's potato rolls. If I can make them folks, so can you!

Potato Rolls

1 1/2 C water
2 T yeast
1/2 C sugar
1 1/2 t salt
1/2 C butter
2 eggs
1 C mashed potatoes
Up to 7 C flour

Dissolve the sugar and salt in the water over medium heat. Let cool slightly then pour into your mixer. Add the yeast & stir. Check back in 5 min. or so to be sure the yeast is working. Turn the mixer on & add melted butter, eggs and mashed potatoes. I have a Bosch mixer and with that I just add one cup of flour at a time. I know I have enough flour added when the dough starts pulling away from the sides. I think I only used about 5 1/2 cups of flour. You can let it raise in the bowl or just go ahead and roll it into balls and put them on the baking pan. I opted for latter since it was getting to be supper time. I preheated the oven while I was rolling the dough and then shut it off. When the pans were ready I popped them into the oven for 10 minutes or so to hurry up the raising time. Turned the oven back on to 400 & baked them for 10 minutes!

I didn't try to make them healthy at all. I used white flour and regular cane sugar. The kids were thrilled. This was as good as dessert for them. I think it will be a fun recipe to mess around with though. I'm sure I'll try to make a healthier version at some point. My next goal is to learn how to make the perfect pot roast. I have never been satisified with the ones I make. They just aren't falling apart tender when I make them. If anyone has a delicious pot roast recipe please feel free to share.

9 comments:

Brenda said...

My favorite way to fix pot roast? I put the frozen roast in the crockpot on low Saturday night. By noon Sunday, it is falling apart. I also use Mansmith's Seasoning from Hy-Vee ~ I haven't found anything that tastes better than that. If you want to add potatoes, carrots, onions, fresh mushrooms, do it early Sunday morning. Enjoy!

Neisha said...

I'll be giving these rolls a try. I too can not make rolls and it doesn't help that my MIL is an awesome cook and makes awesome rolls. So maybe I'll make these and impress everyone.
I have a roast in the crockpot right now. Get a 3-4 lb. sirloin tip roast, place in crockpot, cover with 1 pkg onion soup mix and 1 can cream of mushroom soup. Cook on HI for 6-8 hours. Then you also have gravy for potatoes if you'd like.
This is the falling apart roast. It might be a bit $$ to buy so look to see when the grocery store might have it on sale. Course, it's so good that I buy it anyway.

Jenny said...

I made venison roasts in the oven on Sunday and they turned out great. I don't have enough patience with the Crock-Pot, or else I don't put it in early enough so my crock-pot roasts have been less than satisfactory. But in the oven they're great. I put two roasts (they were small) in a cast-iron dutch oven and chunked up two onions to cook with it. The only seasoning I used was a little sea salt. Baked it at 325 for 3 hours. It was done when we got home from meeting!

Anonymous said...

Shoot, I thought I'd get to see Craig in his Speedo. ;]

Ethel said...

i have a roaster pan..put plenty of water in the bottom...up to about 2 inches even..then one or two roasts...a little salt and pepper, sometimes Bavarian seasoning from Penzey's spices..sometimes not and then potatoes, carrots, onions..sometimes shallots and bake at 350 for 3 - 3 1/2 hrs. It's never tough. I use the juice then to make gravy sometimes or as a base for a beef stock soup.

Lani said...

What everyone else said... a lot of times I just use a package of onion soup mix and salt and pepper... and like ms. wilder said, you can add potatos and carrots to the mix if you'd like. These rolls look gorgeous and delicious. Thanks for sharing the recipe.

The J's said...

My favorite is Chuck Roast. Cook low temp, and long. Fall apart delish every time. Also I have a really really good recipe for one a little different, my kids LOVE it!--on my blog
http://lmand12js.blogspot.com/2008/01/are-you-hungry.html

Anonymous said...

Fun to read everyone's recipes and ideas. Mindy, it sounds like you are well on your way to making buns/bread in your Bausch. So, do you taste the potatoes in the buns? Sounds like a lot of sugar - I use 4 Tblsp. for 5 cups of liquid - about 11 cups of flour. As for roast... Sunday's favorite easiest meal for me... And I hardly ever think about Sunday dinner until Sunday morning!! I stick a frozen roast in my roaster in an inch of water (the roast creates it's own juices when cooking) with seasonings about 8:30 am at 350 degrees for one hour. When we leave at 9:30 for "church", I turn the oven down to 300 degrees. It's falling apart ready to eat at 12:00 noon when we arrive home. Happy cooking.

Anonymous said...

By the way... it takes practice to make perfect buns. When I started 17 years ago, Kerry teased me that we could go out on the ice and play hockey with them -- guess they were like hockey pucks to him!!!