Graham Clover Rolls with a Soft Crumb

Set out whole milk warm, salt, and molasses before you start Graham Clover Rolls with a Soft Crumb. The batch is written for 32 Rolls.

Count on 20 minutes of prep, 20 minutes of cooking, 3 hours of resting, about 3 hours from the first measurement to the plate.

Ingredients Method

What goes in the bowl

• 2 cups whole milk warm
• 1 ½ teaspoons salt
• 2 tablespoons molasses
• 2 ¼ teaspoons dried active yeast 1 packet
• 1 cup whole-wheat flour
• 5 cups graham flour

How the cooking goes

1. Put molasses and slat to the hot milk and let it cool until it is lukewarm. [Note: This kitchen is impatient, so you placed the mixer bowl in a larger bowl filled with cold, but not icy water and stirred until the mixture reached a temperature of 100 ° – 110° F].
2. While your milk mixture is cooling, Add ¼ cup of warm water (100 ° – 110° F) to the yeast then stir to mix. Then added 1 t of sugar to proof the yeast. Wait 10 minutes and if the mixture has tripled in size then the yeast is healthy & ready to use.
3. Put the proofed yeast to the milk mixture and stir to mix.
4. Add all the whole wheat flour and three cups of graham flour. Using a bread hook attachment on your mixer or a wooden spoon, mix and continue adding graham flour until you have a stiff dough. You used about 4 ½ cups of graham flour.
5. You then set the Kitchen Aid mixer with the bread-hook attachment on speed 2, and let it work it’s magic until the dough climbed up the hook and cleaned the sides of the bowl, about two minutes. Then knead on speed 2 for an additional two minutes. With this bread you want to be careful not to over knead because it is already a very dense bread.
6. If you are doing the kneading by hand Ruth explains, “Press the dough away with the palms of your hand. Stretch the dough from the edge, folding back edge over to the center. Press the dough away with the palms of your hands, exerting sufficient force to cause the part folded over to adhere to the mass under it, and repeat folding. Turn dough one-quarter around and repeat kneading. Continue turning, folding and kneading until dough is smooth and elastic and will not stick to an unfloured board.”.
7. FIRST RISING – Grease large bowl with vegetable oil. You pour a little oil in the hands and then spread the oil over the insides of the bowl with the hands like fingerpainting. You find this more efficient and rather fun! Place dough in bowl and turn the dough in the bowl to cover all sides of the dough with oil. Cover with damp towel and place in a warm place (80 ° – 85°) for an hour, or until the dough is triple its size. There is no warm place in the condo at this time of year, so you pre-heated the oven for 10 minutes and then let it cool down to a comfortable temperature. An oven thermometer would be very helpful here.
8. Sometime during the final proofing, you will want to grease your pans: two standard loaf pans or 32 muffin tins.
9. SHAPING THE LOAVES – Separate the dough into two halves. Place dough into well-greased pans. Cover with a damp cloth then let rise until doubled in volume.
10. SHAPING CLOVER ROLLS – you pinched off pieces of dough that were roughly the size of two large grapes, shaped them like a grape, and pressed three into each greased muffin tin. Working quickly, repeat this step until all the dough is gone. Cover pans with a damp cloth and keep it to one side to rise.
11. Cook loaves at 400° for 15 minutes and then decrease the temperature to 350° for the remaining 45 minutes. The loaves are done when the sides pull away from the pan, the crust is a rich, deep gold, and the loaves sound hollow when you firmly tap the top. You can also insert a cake tester into the center; the loaves are done when it comes out clean. Immediately remove the loaves from the pans to cool on a rack.
12. Cook rolls for 8 minutes at 400° and then decrease the temperature to 350° for the remaining 10-20 minutes. You would start checking these after 10 minutes. You use the cake tester test for rolls. The others are too unreliable.

After it comes off the heat

Wait until the loaf is cool before slicing. Wrap it at room temperature, and freeze slices you will not eat in a couple of days.

If you want another plate from Dinner rolls, open Pumpkin Dinner Rolls Baked Until the Tops Set and Savory Pumpkin Rolls with a Soft Crumb.