Clover Rolls

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……

Kneading The Dough 1

Kneading the Dough 2

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…….

Back in the bowl

Cover to keep warm

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

Risen Dough 1

Risen Dough 2

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……..

Creating the Clover Roll

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……

Risen and Ready to Bake

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……..

Finished Product 1

Finished Product 2

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.