It’s Fall: Yay!

It’s fall. October 7 now.

I have not made rolls or much of any yeast items for months, maybe even a year or two. I more often make instant-ish stuff, like sweet rolls out of a wrapped can of biscuits—which I douse with butter, brown sugar and cinnamon, and then after baking, top them with icing that I’ve mixed up with powdered sugar and cream. It worked for our family for a treat on Sunday mornings (when we used to be all home, five of us) and now after our Sunday morning yummies, my husband paces his share of the sweet rolls out for a quick breakfast treat the rest of the week, one day at a time.

Then I discovered I was totally out of bread in the freezer. Yikes, and I didn’t want to go to town or the little grocery 2 miles away. But luckily I had yeast and flour and shortening on hand.

So, I’m sharing an easy recipe if you enjoy making bread or rolls. This one comes from a well-known and top seller cookbook, Mennonite Country-Style Recipes & Kitchen Secrets, a collection by Esther H. Shank, and it received the Benjamin Franklin Award from Publishers Marketing Association back in 1987, with 100,000 copies in print at the point I received my copy. (Don’t know how many are in print now!) I’ve never tried this recipe, so I will let you know how they turn out.

I did make some delicious vegetable beef soup last night which will go great with these rolls, once I get them out of the oven!

Top-Notch Dinner Rolls

1 cup warm water
2 pks. dry yeast (2 tbsp.)
1 tbsp. sugar

Stir together until dissolved. Let set until foamy.

Then:

1 ½ cups hot water
½ cup shortening
½ cup sugar
2 ½ tsp. salt

Stir together until melted. Cool to lukewarm, and add to yeast mixture (or pour your yeast mixture into the water/shortening/sugar/salt mixture—is what I did.)

Then: Using approximately 10 cups sifted flour, or 8 cups unsifted, gradually add more flour, beating well. Then work in just enough more flour to make a soft but not sticky dough.

Grease the top of the dough, and then place in a greased bowl. Cover and let rise until double. Punch down and let rest 10 minutes, Shape into rolls and let rise until double again. Bake at 350 degrees about 25 minutes until lightly browned.

Yield: about 32 large rolls.

Ruby Petersheim

Esther Shenk is still living here in the Shenandoah Valley, as far as I know. She wrote a review for the cookbook I eventually put together (with others) in 2010, called Whatever Happened to Dinner.

Both books are available on Amazon.

Mennonite Country-Style Recipes – Herald Press