The first difficulty was buying Flour, they have a different Flour for everything here, where in America it’s All Purpose Flour, there are also several different types of Sugar here too so it started getting Confusing for me. Really you have no Idea how different shopping will be when you are in a different country. Baking Soda isn’t called Baking Soda here and Vanilla is pricey and in a very tiny container unlike the big 99 cent bottles back in the US.

But after several attempt’s of looking for baking supplies, I was successful in my ventures. The last hurdle was the oven…… this is a painful, horrid oven that mocks me every time I try to cook. I set it at the Lowest settings and things still burn. FYI, it cooked a cake in 10-15 mins and started to burn the bottom, just telling you this so you have a better understanding of what I was up against. After burning a few batches I figured out how long to cook them for, Sugar Cookies- baked in 3 mins.

I guess what I’m basically trying to say in this blog is, you never realize how easy you had it until you leave home.

I feel like the family baker when it comes to the big Family Gathering’s. Especially on Holidays such as Thanksgiving and Easter.  I use my Great Grandmothers bread recipe to make the dinner rolls for the meal.  Their called Clover Rolls, getting the name because of their shape, like a three leaf clover.

I didn’t get the idea to do this photo blog until I was elbow deep in dough, besides I was running so behind. I don’t have pictures of the liquids being added to the dries, then the flour being added to that.  Sorry folks, I do feel like your missing a lot of the process and I do apologize for that.

I am usually up at 5 am to get the process in motion. It takes along time to make the dough, well actually the kneading and rising are more time consuming than anything.  I start out by mixing yeast, powdered milk, sugar & salt.  Then we add warm water, this is a bit tricky too, if you get it too hot, you scorch the yeast and the dough wont rise, too cool and the yeast wont really activate. I sometimes feel like a Mad Scientist when I make this stuff. Then we add Vegetable Oil and mix well, I dislike this part too because you have to try and break up the yeast while stirring. It can be a real pain and I usually just end up getting my hands dirty and breaking them up with my fingers.  Now comes time for my Muscles, we start slowly adding flour to the mix stirring as you do.  Again the scientist feeling comes into play,  if it gets added too fast you get huge flour lumps, harder to kneed out. I have this part down to a fine art, it took years of practice to hold a 5lb bag of flour in one hand and stir with the other. Generally you add enough flour to get it nice and thick, get it ready to pour onto a table or counter to be kneaded.  More muscle work is required for this kneading bit.  I find as I’m getting older it continues to get harder and harder to do, just don’t have the arm strength I use to have. Ok so after we have the dough the consistency we want , throw some flour down on our work area and dump the dough onto it.  Scoop flour over the top of the dough and just dig in at this point, fold add flour, fold add flour, until it looks like this……

Once we have it knead to the point where it isn’t sticky we want to put it back into the bowl, cover and place in a warm spot for an Hour and a Half…….

Now we wait for an hour and a half, when your timer goes off your going to come back to this…

Pretty Amazing huh, I love it when Sugar and Yeast collide….chemistry at it’s coolest. Now your going to have fun pushing this Blob down, folding it into a smaller ball then recovering the bowl for more rising.  This time only a half hour to wait.

Once the timer goes off again we push the dough down again and begin the rolling process. Get yourselves a few muffin tin’s, oil them and roll yourself some small dough balls. You will place three per muffin space. Like so……..

Once again we are gonna cover these babies and let them rise one last time for another half hour.  I don’t think you can tell so much in this next pic, but the rolls are going to get much bigger and be ready for backing……

Now we just pop them in the oven that’s been preheated to 350 degrees and back for about 20 minutes. You just wanna make sure they have a nice light browning on the tops, if over cooked they come out very dry and yucky.  Once you remove them from the oven, your gonna take a little butter and rub the tops with it to keep it moist, this also makes them look a little more tempting.  Our final pic’s are the finished product……..

So there you have it, how I spent my Thanksgiving Morning.

My sister has been trying to talk me into using frozen dough from the store to make the rolls for years now, but that to me really take the Love out of it, besides, I think it is so important to keep as many Family traditions going as long as possible. When I get to the point that I cant do it anymore, I will pass the torch on to one of my kids and hope they will pass it onto theirs.  Family and Tradition, two key factors of life…hope people remember that.