First update from the new place…

Well… looking back, perhaps naming the blog “Cooking in Boone” may not have been the best choice… as we’re no longer in Boone… so… there may be a slight name change in the future… however, the address to the blog will remain the same I suppose….

 

So… we’re in our new place in Staunton, and after spending a week unpacking and trying to figure out where things should go… I finally got the kitchen to a point where I could start cooking in it again….

This is our new kitchen… you may notice we’re running extremely short on counter space… so… we’re tossing around the idea of buying some sort of island… or, I might build one…. until then, this is our “prep” area…

So… that makes things interesting… but… all of that aside… on to the food!

I had a pork shoulder going in the crockpot… so, we needed some bread to make BBQ sandwiches with…. I decided to make some Refrigerator Rolls.. it’s a simple recipe, that gives you nice, yeasty rolls… You’ll need

• 2 Packages Active Yeast
• 2 Cups warm water
• 1/2 Cup Sugar
• 1 TSP Salt
• 6 Cups All Purpose Flour
• 1 Egg
• 1/4 Cup Shortening

Starting off, put the 2 cups of warm water in a mixing bowl and add your 2 packages of yeast, 1/2 Cup of Sugar, and 2 cups of flour. Mix all of these together until they are well blended…

This will be very thin, but you’re basically just making the base for the bread first…. Then add the shortening and egg and mix that in well…

After it’s mixed together well, add flour 1 cup at a time until you start to get a soft dough….

It shouldn’t be as stiff as if you were making French or Italian bread… it shouldn’t be “goopy” … but it shouldn’t be stiff either… it should be somewhere in the middle…

Spray some baking spray in the mixing bowl covering the bowl, and covering the top of the dough. Then, cover the bowl and toss it into the fridge overnight.

In the morning, your dough should have risen pretty significantly, (so, make sure you use a mixing bowl that is large enough….)

Here is the dough after rising overnight in the fridge… This is a good time to preheat your oven to 400 degrees…  Then, punch the dough down…

After you punch the dough down, spray a baking sheet with baking spray and begin to divide your dough…

You should be able to fit 6-8 rolls on your baking sheet, depending on the size of your rolls…

For BBQ rolls, I started with rolls that were about 2-1/2” across.

For me, this is about a palm sized roll… so, not quite the size of a hamburger bun… but still big enough for a decent sized sandwich… When you break the dough up into rolls, you may be tempted to make little round balls… but, you want to make them flat, like hamburger patties. As they cook, they will rise and become round all on their own… If you make them round to begin with, they’ll just get taller… they won’t get much wider… so, get the width that you want, and let the baking process take care of the height…  If you like, you can brush the top of the rolls with a little butter, or with some egg whites…

Toss them in the oven at 400 degrees for 12-15 minutes… or until they’re golden brown…

You’ll notice some cracking / opening of the rolls as they cook… the cracks / openings are caused from overlaps in the dough.. and since the dough was sprayed to keep it from sticking to the mixing bowl, it also will not stick to itself very well…

This roll was made by sticking several smaller pieces of dough together… while it’ll still taste the same, it doesn’t have the strength or appearance of a roll that was formed from one, uninterrupted piece of dough.

This roll was basically cut off from the large piece of dough in the mixing bowl, then quickly and gently formed into a patty shape… here, you don’t have many cracks (there will always be a few cracks during the baking as the dough vents, but you can control the venting location by cutting a slit on the top of each roll)

That’s it for making the rolls… they’re really amazingly easy to make… it might take you a bit of practice to figure out how to form them so they look all pretty, but you should be able to get the hang of it rather quickly… You wouldn’t have a problem if you didn’t spray the bowl and dough with baking spray, but then, you’d also have a sticky doughy mess when you try to form the rolls… so.. it’s a trade-off….

We finished up the pork last night, and pulled it… so we’re ready for some BBQ sandwiches… if you need a recipe for the pork, just look back in the archives of the blog… Here: Pork Day 1 and Here: Pork Day 2 .