Sweet Breakfast Rolls

I just love the smell of fresh bread, but I didn’t want to make my regular country bread, I wanted to try something else. Many years ago, I subscribed to one of these mail-order recipe collection, “The Great American Home Baking”. I have the whole collection, four full binders, but I admit, I rarely made anything out of this collection... and yet, I’ve always been reluctant to get rid of it. I thought it was time to finally use them. So I went through the first category, “Biscuits and Rolls”, and selected their Sweet Breakfast Rolls.

Ingredients:

• 2 pkgs active dry yeast
• ¼ cup granulated sugar
• 1 cup warm milk
• 4-4 ½ cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• ¼ tsp salt
• 6 tbsp softened butter
• 2 large eggs
  

For the glaze:

• 1 large egg
• 2 tsp water
  

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Preparation:

1. In a large bowl, dissolve yeast and 1 tsp of sugar in warm milk. Let stand until foamy.
2. Mix together flour, cinnamon and salt (use a whisk, it does the same work as sifting while mixing all dry ingredients).
3. Beat the butter and sugar into the yeast mixture. Use the hooks of your stand mixer. Stay at medium speed. Add the eggs, one at a time. Then, at low speed, add the flour mixture, ½ cup at a time, until a soft dough forms.
4. On a floured surface, knead dough until smooth and elastic (5-10 minutes), adding more flour (on the surface, the dough and your hands) as necessary to prevent sticking. Place dough in a large greased bowl, turning to coat. Cover loosely with a damp towel, let rise in a warm place until double in size (1 hour to 1 ½ hours).
5. Grease a baking sheet (I used parchment paper but that might explain my results, see below). Punch down the dough. On a floured surface, knead dough for 1-2 minutes. Roll the dough into a long rope OR if you’re having difficulties with rolling dough into ropes, like me, cut the dough in half, to make more manageable ropes. Cut the rope(s) in 16 equal pieces. Roll them in your hand and shape them into oval buns.
6. Place the buns 3” apart on the baking sheet. Cover loosely with a damp towel and let it rise in a warm place until doubled (about 30 minutes).
7. Preheat the oven at 425º. Brush the rolls with the glaze (one egg beaten, with water). If you want, you can also sprinkle the top of the rolls with granulated or coarse/pearl sugar.
8. Bake the rolls until lightly golden. The recipe mentions 6-8 minutes. After 8 minutes, my rolls still were not golden, so I added 2 minutes. This might account for the bottom of the buns being a bit darker and harder (although not noticeable when eating the bun), unless it had to do with using the parchment paper instead of greasing the baking sheet...
9. Let it cool on a wire rack.
   

Makes 16 rolls.

Serve with honey, chocolate spread or jam. It can also be used for savory sandwiches (ham, turkey...).