Sage Butter Dinner Rolls
Nibbles and Bites Issue # 48: Happy New Year!
Happy almost New Year!
We got through yet another successful holiday season without a hitch! Milo, Chip and I spent our time up in the woods of New Hampshire. We soaked in the fresh air and enjoyed playing in the powdery snow on the ground. I built a few fires in the fireplace to keep the house extra warm and we went snowshoeing on a trail that winds through the woods by the edge of the property line, led us over a creek and ends at the foot of a lake. The trees were covered in sparkly snow, it was pure magic.
And of course, we made a lot of delicious things, and ate every meal at home. I dabbled in some large format dishes, a dill and goat cheese pasta bake, a roast chicken dinner that included two chickens, and I even spearheaded making my first bûche de Noël for Christmas that quickly became a two day project. It involved candying rosemary and cranberries, pipping, drying and then assembling meringue mushrooms and tempering chocolate for ganache. By the end of it, this cake truly looked like a precious little log sitting on the forest floor and you couldn’t convince me otherwise.
This week I am sharing a recipe for my sage dinner rolls that are filled with butter. They are just mildly perfumed with sage and are perfect for a comforting meal at home. I enjoy this recipe there are two different resting periods, one is a two hour long rest in which you quite literally could leave the house and run some major errands and the second is just 45 minutes long. The point being, there is a lot of downtime before the rolls come out of the oven and you don’t need to carve out an entire day to prepare them.
I hope everyone enjoys this recipe and makes room for more buttered bread in the New Year. Don’t forget, New Year’s resolutions are silly, they’re meant to make you feel inadequate, and don’t ever last more than a few weeks, which is why I resolve to make zero resolutions this coming year.
Until next time and next year!
Kristen
Sage Dinner Rolls
Ingredients:
3 ¼ cups all-purpose flour
2 ¼ tsp instant yeast
2 tsp kosher salt
1 ½ cups warm, whole milk
½ cup unsalted butter, melted
10 sage leaves, plus more for garnish
2 large eggs, separated beaten at room temperature
Instructions:
Place the butter and the sage leaves in a small pot over medium heat. Allow the butter to melt and the sage to steep for 5 to 10 minutes. Remove the sage leaves from the melted butter.
In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, yeast and salt until completely combined. Add the warm milk, the half of the melted butter, and one of the beaten eggs with a flexible spatula until a wet shaggy dough forms. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and place in a warm spot until the dough has doubled in size and is airy, about 2 hours.
Grease two 8-inch round cake pans or two medium baking pans (I used one 8-inch round cake pan and a loaf pan, which worked perfectly). Place the dough on a liberally floured work surface. Form the dough into a rectangle by folding the top of the dough towards the bottom and then the bottom to the top, and fold the sides like an envelope. Flip the dough over, and pat into a rectangle about 8 by 12-inches.
Divide the dough into about 16 pieces each weighing about 55g. Roll each piece of dough into a tight ball by placing your hands around it and moving it in a circular motion on a lightly floured surface until the surface of the dough is smooth. Place eight of the balls in each prepared pan and rest, covered for 45 minutes until light and fluffy. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
Brush the dough with the remaining beaten egg, top with a sage leaf and bake for 25 to 30 minutes rotating the trays and brushing with the remaining sage butter halfway through. Remove from the oven, brush a final time with butter and serve.
What a handsome pup!