Another Mel’s Kitchen Cafe recipe! If you are in need of a wonderful dinner roll – homemade – for your Thanksgiving dinner, I say look no further.

Mel’s Kitchen Café: Buttery Fluffy Cornmeal Dinner Roll recipe is everything the title says and there are a mountain of her readers who agree.

The recipe was originally posted as a crescent roll and I passed it over. I am not a huge fan of flaky crescent rolls and instead of paying attention to the recipe, I just moved on. My mistake!

Yesterday, Mel posted the Buttery Fluffy Cornmeal Dinner Roll recipe in the shape of dinner rolls and I paid attention.

This morning, in the dark of the very early morning, I mixed the dough. A few modifications: I always sub Masa Harina for cornmeal. I buy Masa made in Mexico from Mexican grown corn that doesn’t have all of the corn flavor GMO’d out of it! So, Masa in place of cornmeal in this recipe. Mel noted that she sometimes makes these rolls with 1/2 white whole wheat and 1/2 white flour so I did that and also added some vital wheat gluten to add back any fluffiness the whole wheat might take away. AND, I had some discard sourdough starter (unfed starter) so threw that in as well.

Oh, boy! These are soft, fluffy, lovely, lovely dinner rolls, perfect for both sopping up that turkey gravy AND for day after turkey sandwiches.

I made 1/3 of the recipe: 8 rolls. I hope a few make it to Thanksgiving Day.

I imagine I will be making this recipe again before Thanksgiving Day – maybe the whole recipe! Mel notes that these freeze beautifully.

Even if you’ve never made homemade rolls, this is a great recipe to start with – simple, easy to work with dream dough and the BEST dinner rolls!!

A little over a year ago, I started making sourdough bread (Sourdough v1.0) from a starter made with my own sweet well water and Wheat Montana flour. Sourdough starter is the cultivation of wild yeast … from the air, water and flour … into a form usable for baking.

Before last year, I thought it was too much fuss and I was making delicious artisanal breads via a high moisture and long rise/storage method. But I found that there really was something to the wild yeast and very long rise that added extra flavor to every bread. And I found that it was not a big deal to maintain and use the starter.

The bigger deal than maintaining the starter is the planning ahead part as there is an overnight or 8-12 hour leaven rise, then another 8-12 hour timeframe for developing the dough, letting it rest, pre-shaping, rest, final shaping, rest and finally bake … and THEN, you must let the baked loaf cool for several hours for the best flavor. It is worth it, but I got lazy over the summer and went back to the easier method.

Recently, after starting to make kefir ( Fermenting ) and then reading more about fermented foods, sourdough kept popping up on the fermenting websites. The folks fermenting milk and vegetables were also advocating sourdough for health benefits.

An internet web search on “sourdough health benefits” turns up many articles that explain the health benefits, but in a nutshell, the fermentation process (the starter and long rise) creates a lactobacillus culture or lactic acid. The lactic acid breaks down phytates (indigestible) and works in combination with the wild yeast to pre-digest the starches in the grain. The long soak and rise times break down the gluten into amino acids, making gluten more digestible. Many people who have trouble with commercial bread or bread made with commercial yeast, can tolerate sourdough. Bottomline, just like kefir (fermented milk) and fermented vegetables have bacteria that is good for a healthy gut, the sourdough starter and sourdough process have similar benefits for digestion and absorption of nutrients.

I’d been thinking of restarting the sourdough process primarily because I missed the bread and the sourdough crackers made from discard starter. The health info completed the motivation.

Beautiful!

That’s my bubbly starter about day 7.

The same starter, but stirred up. You can see how much it had bubbled up – good stuff! It has a sour-tangy smell when it is active like this. Not a bad smell – it smells like sourdough!

For this sourdough recipe, 1 Tablespoon of starter is added to 75 grams of flour and 75 grams of water, stirred, covered and left to set at room temperature for 12 hours.

Then more flour, water – a rest, salt dissolved in water and next a period of stretching the dough … once every half hour for 2 1/2 hours.

Above is what the dough looks like after the stretching.

Next is a pre-shape – a rest – final shaping and another rest.

The dough flattens more than rises.

Sprinkle with flour, slash the top and the dough is ready for the oven.

Out of the oven.

Let cool for several hours…

Sourdough bread – yum!

Pumpkin Pasta Bake and a side salad of baby spinach and arugula with a basil-ranch-vinaigrette.

And bread – a beautiful loaf of peasant bread: rye/white whole wheat/white

Thursday supper: so pretty and so good.

A new recipe appeared on Mel’s Kitchen Cafe today. I’d been thinking I’d like to have some sandwich bread … soft bread as opposed to my crispy-crusted artisanal bread … and today: Mel’s Kitchen Café: Whole Wheat Quinoa Bread

A quick post of the photos (I made 1/3 recipe, i.e. 1 loaf pan):

First rise – I got in the middle of a work meeting and it went 2 3/4 hours … a bit of an overrise.

Shaped to go in the pan.

Second rise – ready to go in the oven.

Out of the oven (325 for 30 minutes convection). ***Next round I might let the second rise go a bit longer and bake 5 more minutes.

Ready to cut.

Yea – perfect texture, soft but hearty, made a good sandwich and good toast.

***Update 10/21. I made a sandwich yesterday (day old) and the bread was soft, but held together for the sandwich. I sliced and froze the remaining half loaf and today thawed two slices – again perfectly soft but stayed whole for a sandwich. This is the best sandwich loaf I’ve every made – so happy with this recipe!

When I write a post, I typically have an idea of where it is going. But sometimes, things go sideways and I end up going down a different road than I planned.

Anyway.

The subject IS fermenting … of food, but I decided to lookup up “ferment” and the following came back from the Oxford Dictionary site:

Hee… #2 is kind of au currant funny or sad. Actually sad.

But on to the food kind of fermenting.

Two weeks ago, in the Sunday in the kitchen post, I showed the start of cabbage, apple and jicama fermenting, aka sauerkraut.

Last Sunday, the mix was bubbly and ready for tasting.

YUM! Much better flavor with the cultures and the apple-jicama additions than with just cabbage/water/salt. I will be happily making my own ‘kraut from now on.

I learned about this recipe on Donna Schwenk’s Cultured Food Life via a post on Mel’s Kitchen Cafe titled Mel’s Kitchen Café: Let’s talk about Kefir.

I’ve seen Kefir in the store and from the containers, it looked like it was just liquid yogurt and that did not appeal. But, after Mel’s post and a dive into Donna Schwenk’s Cultured Food Life, I was motivated to try making Kefir.

I had an opportunity to get grains from a friend, but they needed to be sent and meanwhile I tried the store variety. I tried a number of brands and my favorite was a raw goat milk version. Still, according to further reading, homemade from live grains along with a second ferment, was reputed to have the most good bacteria as well as the most additional nutrients AND best taste.

The kefir grains arrived about ten days ago and I’ve since been making my own kefir.

Taste of homemade from grains is 100% better than any of the store brands I tried. The homemade kefir is sweet-sour-tangy-fizzy good.

Mel’s post has a link to a site that speaks about how good kefir is for dogs as well. Further research shows that it is also good for cats. Bear and Auggie are both getting kefir along with me. Since Bear’s Labor Day weekend ER visit and subsequent diet adjustment AND his history with a bit of a sensitive stomach … at any rate, the change in his diet to rice-chicken-pumpkin with kefir and also a senior multi-vitamin (from whole food) … he is acting like a young dog. He seems much more comfortable, is getting up and down easier and overall just moving better. Kefir or diet or recovery from whatever … don’t know, but we are all doing the kefir!

What is kefir? It is fermented milk. More info here: Donna Schwenk’s Cultured Food Life: What is Kefir

The process to make kefir is darn simple:

The grains go in milk. They sit loosely covered for 24 hours. To second ferment, strain out the grains and let the kefir milk sit at room temperature for another 8-12 hours. Then into the refrigerator. The strained grains go into a new bit of milk and the cycle continues. The grains grow in volume with each round, so ultimately they can be given to someone who wants/needs them or the grains can be used in a smoothie or given to pets.

You can add flavors to the second ferment. I make some plain and some I add orange peel. The plain is for Bear and Auggie. I use the orange peel version in smoothies as well as a nighttime brew of orange peel kefir, turmeric and black pepper (turmeric needs fat and black pepper to best be used by the body).

Bottomline, I am fermenting cabbage into sauerkraut and milk into kefir for Bear, Auggie and me.