Just a quickie

This has to be fast, because I really don't have too much time to write much now, nor will I have much time later! Have you ever had one of those days where you feel like you're entirely well organized (for once!)? The dishes are done, something is out of the freezer already mostly thawed for supper, and all that's left to do is cook it and then veg out for the night? Well, that was me this past Wednesday. I had these lovely center cut pork chops out and ready to roll for dinner, all the errands for the day had been done and the house was spotless. I was ahead of the game, and it was great while it lasted. At about 4:30 p.m., I was informed by DW that the in-laws were coming over for dinner at 7:30 p.m., and then from there we were going to go and see RocknRolla at a nearby cinema. The movie was something I was all for, considering I absolutely love going to see movies in the theatres, but the in-laws coming over for dinner? It was almost instant panic! Not only did I have to change my plans for dinner over, but I had to do it in a way that would satisfy the in-laws' picky palates and I had three hours to do it!

See, since there are only two people in the house, I generally buy a lot of meats sized for just that - two, but I do buy a couple of things that will feed at least four people knowing that I do enjoy to occasionally have a couple of folks over for dinner. Still, I had to put the pork chops back in and thaw out one of those bigger sized things (for them I chose a nice chuck roast that I could put in the oven with some braising liquid and let it just sit for a few hours) and then get it in the oven too cook, peel enough potatoes to make a mountain of mashed (the people in my family love, love, love mashed taters. I don't blame them as they're my favorite thing to eat and I could eat them all day every day!) and set some fresh broccoli on the stove top to steam. Sounds easy enough, right? Well, it was...but I'm the kind of person that strives to impress - especially when it comes to my MIL. She's a culinary genius, and I like to show that I'm doing her proud by feeding her daughter up as well as she can. Naturally, for this meal, this meant putting the canned biscuits aside and digging out the makings for fresh bread.

I know what you're thinking? Fresh bread?! Are you nuts? Are you trying to make your life more difficult? Well, normally I'd have said screw it and dealt with the canned biscuits I keep in my fridge in case I feel like making southern-style biscuits and sausage gravy or Monkey Bread because they're coming over for dinner was kind of short notice. But for some reason, on this day I was determined to find a decent recipe for fresh out of the oven dinner rolls - because let's face it, nothing says home cookin' like fresh-baked dinner rolls. Not to mention the fact that the yeasty bready smell that pervades the house while stuff like that bakes is divine!

So, I was looking on the internet, hoping to find something easy, when it occured to me that Mrs.B had a recipe for these yummy sounding, no knead, relatively quick rising yeast rolls over on her blog. I said, what the hell? I have yeast, I have flour. Let's give 'em a try!

I whipped up the ingredients as stated in the recipe - except since I didn't have bread flour I used all purpose unbleached flour - and set the dough in an oiled bowl covered over with a damp, clean kitchen towel and put it on top of my handy dandy space heater to let it rise. I put the dough to rise at approximately 4:50 and at approximately 6:50 the dough had doubled in size as the recipe recommends. I then followed the rest of the directions from there and wound up with rolls that looked like this!



Now, this recipe made about 24 or 26 rolls, and between four people, we pretty much devoured the whole pan. They were fantastic! A nice, dense chewy roll that, when paired with pats of butter, were an excellent accompaniment to a savory roast dinner. In fact, just thinking about them makes me want to make more and I don't even have a clue what I'm going to make for supper tonight! I bet they'd be even better with the bread flour - probably more light and airy and less likely to have a consistency almost like a biscuit. Still, they were so easy to make and had the added side benefit of thoroughly impressing my in-laws. :)

Thanks for sharing that recipe Mrs. B!