Refrigerator Rolls (the Danish recipe)

Here is another easy bead recipe. They were served to me at a friend's house as part of lunch for sandwiches. She told me how easy the recipe was, so then I of course I had to have it.

I made it last weekend for our guests. Fresh baked bread for breakfast with Den Gamle Fabrik jam (this time rose hips flavor). Yummy...and so Danish. They (this being my MIL and her friend) said that the recipe sounded like what they'd call refrigerator rolls. Isn't it funny, everything I want to do - line dry cloths, have chickens in my backyard, bake my own bread - are the things my MIL used to do almost as necessity way back when.


Refrigerator Rolls

3 deciliter oats
7 deciliter warm water
5 grams yeast (just a tiny bit of the yeast cube)
650 grams flour (she likes to use half white and half grahamsmel)
2 teaspoons salt
2 dessert spoons unrefined sugar (or brown sugar)

Mix all the ingredients together and place bowl in fridge (or outside) overnight. In the morning mix again, and then let the dough warm up. Place blobs onto papered pan, sprinkle blobs with water and add desired topping (sesame is my favorite). Bake at 240 degrees for 18 minutes with the fan on.

Now that I've made these twice, I've learned that letting the dough warm a bit is important, and having the fan on is also important.

I got my grocery shopping done bright and early yesterday morning - I knew the holiday rush would be crazy later on in the day. The country will only be shut down for one day - but by the way people shop, you'd think it was shutting down for two weeks. The only thing I can compare it to is when a BIG BIG Minnesota snowstorm is anticipated - that kind of grocery store shopping. Like the snow will *actually* keep you stranded in the house for more than a day (or two).


I don't know why this makes me so happy, but it does. Maybe its just one less thing to worry about over the weekend.

Beans and Buns

So this week I've managed to make a pot of beans, and a batch of buns. Finally, I've felt like putting a bit of effort into cooking.

(Last weekend, I tried to make what I thought would be black beans, but they weren't. They were black on the outside, white on the inside, and had a funky flavor. These were the *black* beans bought at the Chinese grocery a couple of weeks ago - I have since re-assigned them to the art box.)

But the black-eyed peas I bought were labeled in English *black-eyed peas* and they turned out looking and tasting like black-eyed peas. To the cooked beans I added sauteed onion, red pepper, and celery as well as S&P, cumin, Sazon, and a bit of chipotle. The husband is busy with work all week, and has not and will not be able to eat any. They tasted really good on Monday, OK yesterday, and today I don't want to even look at them.


Then yesterday I finally tried out a bun recipe from the same friend that gave me the eggless cake recipe. I was having trouble taking my American recipes with American yeast measures, and making them work with the active Danish yeast. So I requested a Danish bun recipe from said friend. Here is it...

Never-Fails Roll Recipe

50 g gær (the cube yeast)
1 tsk salt
2 dl mælk, fingerlunt (I have used mini, let, and sød - all depending on what I happen to have on hand)
500 g hvedemel (flour)
50 g sukker (sugar)
100 g smør/butter (room temperature)

Optional ingredients I have tried alone or in combination:
3 carrots grated, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, 400 g squash (I noticed that with the added squash I had to knead in a lot more flour.)

Crumble the yeast, sprinkle with salt and let the salt dissolve the yeast. Warm the milk so it is still comfortable to the touch. Stir into the yeast/salt mixture.

In a separate bowl, stir the flour and sugar together. I crumble the butter in by hand (because that's the way my grandmother taught me). (And I always use real butter.) Add any optional ingredients now.

Mix the yeast mixture with the flour mixture.

Knead, adding flour as needed.

Let the dough rise ½hr in a warm place. (I often let it rise 45 minutes to an hr because I get involved in something else.)

Form rolls, and let rise ½ hr on the baking sheet. (Again, I often let the rolls rise longer.)

Bake at 225 C for 10 minutes, with a fan if your oven has one.

Makes roughly 2 dozen rolls.

I have a big old bag of rugmel, so in place of all white flour, I used some of that. However, I have now learned that rye flour does not contain any gluten...therefore it doesn't rise (that explains that botched loaf a few months ago), so my buns only turned out half-fluffy. But they are soft and moist on the inside, and the boy is just eating them up, so I'll call it a success.