Soft and light, these delicious bread rolls are made from scratch and make the perfect addition to any dinner menu or party meal.
Believe me when I say, there’s nothing better than taking a batch of freshly baked bread out of the oven. Except of course, eating it. Have you ever tried baking bread at home, from scratch? I know a lot of people feel intimidated by the thought of yeast. I was a member of that club for a very long time. But I can tell you this much, if you keep a few things in mind, you will be well on your way to mastering the art of bread baking. Moreover, there are so many varieties to try.
The recipe I’m sharing with you today is one that I fall back on frequently to make bread rolls. It’s a very basic bread recipe and makes a great starting point, if you haven’t baked bread before.
Things to keep in mind –
- Yeast – Make sure that your yeast is viable. This is easy to do. Place the quantity specified in the recipe in a bowl with warm water and sugar. When rested for about 5 minutes, the yeast gets bubbly and frothy, signalling that it is still viable. If it doesn’t froth up, you may need to replace your yeast.
- Using warm water – Make sure that your water is warm, not hot. You should be able to keep your finger submerged in the warm water comfortably. If you cannot, the water is too hot, and it will kill the yeast.
- Kneading the dough – Kneading the dough takes a little time. You need to do this patiently. This helps build gluten fibres, which in turn will help your bread rise well.
- Resting time – Bread almost always, cannot be rushed, unless you’re making a quick bread. The time needed to rest (prove) your dough depends on the ambient temperature. Resting the dough in a warm spot in the kitchen will help it rise. If it is really cold where you are, consider keeping it by a window that gets a lot of sun or in the oven with just the light on.
Keep these vital points in mind when you’re making bread and you will see great results. Bread making gets better with practice. If your first batch doesn’t turn out spectacular, don’t worry, the next batch will be better, since you now know what to expect. So now that we’ve covered all of that, let’s move on to the recipe.
How to make Bread Rolls (Pao)
12
Rolls20
minutes25
minutes2
hoursSoft and light, these delicious bread rolls are made from scratch and make the perfect addition to any dinner menu or party meal.
Ingredients
1 1/2 tsp instant dried yeast
2 tsp sugar
1/4 cup warm water + 1 cup warm water (approx.) to knead the dough
3 cups plain flour / all purpose flour
1 tsp salt
1-2 tbsp olive oil
Directions
- In a little bowl, place the warm water and add sugar and yeast to it. Stir to mix a little. Let it stand for about 5-10 minutes for the yeast to activate.
- In a large mixing bowl, place the flour and salt. Mix through.
- Make a well in the centre and add the yeast and sugar solution. Mix it in with the flour. Add more warm water gradually and knead to a smooth, soft dough. (I had to use just over 1 cup of water) Once the dough comes together, continue kneading for about 5 minutes. You will find the dough gets a little more stretchy than it first was.
- Drizzle oil and knead it into the dough.
- Lightly oil the bottom of the bowl and place the dough in it. I lightly oil the top of the dough too. This keeps it from drying out. Cover and set aside in a warm spot in the for about an hour or till the dough has doubled in size.
- Knock the dough back to get rid of the air bubbles and roll to a ball. Cut into portions and roll out into smooth balls. Place them about an inch apart in a lightly greased baking pan.
- Cover and leave it in a warm spot for the second rise. This takes about 45 minutes to an hour.
- Preheat your oven to 180 degrees. Brush the top of the bread rolls with some water and bake for about 25-30 minutes.
- As soon as the bread is baked, take it out of the oven, brush some butter over the top and cover the pan for around 5 minutes with a clean tea towel. This traps the steam in and keeps the rolls soft.
- Then take the rolls out of the pan and leave them on a cooling rack to cool.
Enjoy!!!
Recipe Video
Notes
- This is a vegan friendly recipe. I used a vegan butter, but feel free to use a butter of your choice.
30-second Homemade Mayonnaise
For me, the homemade Mayo craze started years ago, back when I was in Bombay. At that time, it was hard to find mayonnaise in stores. The good stuff was usually imported and cost a small fortune. The locally made stuff just didn’t tick the boxes for me. So my husband and I decided to try making mayonnaise at home. A few struggled attempts later, we nailed down our recipe and method and I had posted that recipe here. It was just how we liked it and we could make as much as we needed in a few minutes. I have to say, it has been years since I’ve purchased mayonnaise from a store, except for a couple of times when we just moved to Australia and we waiting on our kitchen appliances and the rest of our stuff to get here.
A couple of years ago, I caught a little snippet of Matt Preston whipping up a batch of Mayonnaise and I simply had to try it with my recipe to see if it worked. The beauty of this method is that it takes about 30 seconds from start to finish to whip up a batch of mayonnaise with minimal clean up after. Since then we’ve never looked back. And today I’m going to share with you my recipe for 30-second Homemade Mayonnaise.
If you’ve every considered making Mayo at home, but thought it was too difficult or too fussy, I urge you to try this out. This is how I like my Mayo. The best part is, you can adjust the salt, sugar and vinegar in the recipe to make it just right for you. Added bonus, no nasties. You know exactly what has gone into making your jar of mayo. So I really hope you try it out soon.
30-second Homemade Mayonnaise
1 fresh, free range egg
3/4 cup oil (I used sunflower oil but any mild flavored oil will do)
1/2 tsp mustard seeds
1 1/2 – 2 tsp apple cider vinegar, or to taste
Salt, to taste
1 tsp sugar, or to taste
Place all the ingredients in a clean and dry jar.
Place the blade of the immersion blender at the bottom of the jar and start it off at a medium speed.
Very slowly raise the blender toward to top of the oil in the jar. You should feel a little resistance as you do this from the emulsifying mayo below.
The mayonnaise is ready to use. You can close the jar and refrigerate till you are ready to use it.
You can watch the video recipe here –
Mawa Cake … with a recipe for Instant Mawa
So last week I shared with you a lesser known, but extremely yummy recipe for a biscuit found in the Pune-Mumbai region – Shrewsbury Biscuits. If you haven’t seen that yet, go check it out, I’ll still be here when you get back.
Okay, so you’re back. Today, is the turn for another lesser known recipe, this time for a cake called Mawa Cake. Again, as far as I know this cake is found in the Pune-Mumbai region. Kayani Bakery in Pune and Merwan’s Cake shop in Mumbai are popular for their Mawa cake, though you will find quite a few other shops selling this cake. They are usually sold in packs of 6 – 6 muffin sized pieces. This simple cake is so very special. It is not much to look at, but what it lacks in looks, it makes up for in taste. If you’ve never heard about this cake before, you should put it on your list of recipes to try out. Mawa is nothing but milk solids and this is widely used in a lot of Indian sweets.
A lot of people cringe at the thought of making their own mawa and just buy it from the local Dairy shop in India. This is because, while it is a simple process of reducing milk, working with about a litre of milk could take you about an hour to process. In the past, I have made Mawa the traditional way a couple of times. But for this cake, I decided to try out a cheat’s version of Mawa. This method takes literally 2 minutes at the most, and you would never be able to tell that it is an instant version. I’m so happy that I found this method. I have a whole bunch of recipes for Indian sweets that I’ve been ignoring, simply because it calls for Mawa. But that has changed, so you can expect to see some more Indian sweets / Mithai recipes, just before the Indian festival season starts.
Back to the cake. If you have your Mawa sorted out, the rest of the recipe is like a simple pound cake one but with a serious flavor profile. The Mawa adds a richness to the cake and it is mildly flavored with cardamom powder, resulting in a very exotic tasting cake. This time around my husband made the cake, which I guess made it even tastier (lol). He chose to bake this in an 8″ round cake tin, but you could bake it in a cupcake tray too. I do hope you try it out.
Mawa Cake
Yields: an 8 inch cake or 15-16 cupcakes
1 portion of homemade mawa (recipe below) or 200g unsweetened mawa
200g all purpose flour
300g sugar
200g butter
4 eggs
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp cardamom powder (Seeds of about 10-12 green cardamom pods, powdered)
Preheat the oven to 160ºC.
Grease and line an 8-Inch Round Cake Pan
Separate the egg yolks from the whites. Beat the whites to a stiff froth and keep aside.
In another bowl, cream the butter, sugar and egg yolks till light and creamy.
Add the mawa, cardamom powder, baking powder and flour and mix till well incorporated. (If the mawa in store bought or is a firm block, grate it before adding into the batter)
Fold in the beaten egg whites gently till just evenly incorporated in the batter.
Pour the batter in the prepared cake pan and bake for about 40-50 minutes (if using a cupcake tray, bake for 15-20 minutes) or till a bamboo skewer inserted near the middle of the cake come out clean.
Cool completely, cut and serve. Don’t get fooled by the look of the cake. It tastes a whole lot better than it looks. And don’t forget, if my husband (who has probably not baked more than a handful of times so far), can whip this up, so can you.
Enjoy!!!
How to make Instant Mawa?
1 tbsp ghee / clarified butter
1/4 cup milk
1 cup full fat milk powder
Warm the ghee and the milk together. You just want this mixture warm, not hot.
Add the milk powder and stir and cook till it comes apart from the pan and starts forming a ball.
Use to make mawa cake.
Notes: If you are baking the cake in a regular cake tin and not a cupcake tray, in some cases, the milk solids may cause the cake to brown quickly. This is normal, but if you think it is browning too fast and may burn, cover the tin loosely with aluminium foil and continue baking till the cake is done.
Where can I find Sour Cream in Mumbai???
It was extremely frustrating for me, until I decided that enough was enough. I was determined to find a way to either make it myself or find a substitute for it. After a lot of reading up and digging through quite a lot of material, I found out that you can easily mix up a concoction that you can use when a recipe calls for sour cream. All you need is some Fresh Cream – I always used Amul Fresh Cream and thick curds (dahi) – this you can either use homemade dahi or Amul Masti Dahi – a brand I preferred to use. I’m pretty sure you could use any other brand available with the same results.
Sour Cream
200g fresh cream
1 heaped tbsp thick curds
A pinch of salt
Beat the cream till slightly thicker and still creamy.
Add the curds and the salt and mix well, till everything is well incorporated.
Use as needed.
And that’s it! How easy is that?
I hope you find this little snippet helpful. I sure did.
Disclaimer: This post hasn’t been sponsored, nor have I been compensated by Amul in any way. These are products that I use and really love working with and wanted to share with you.
How to make Marzipan from scratch!!!
heat for exactly 7 minutes.
– If the marzipan turns too dry add a couple of drops of rose water and knead till it reaches desired consistency.
– If the marzipan is slightly moister than you’d like, knead with some icing sugar till it reaches the desired consistency.
– If the dough is too moist, put in back on the fire for a minute or so and stir. This step is usually not needed. I had to do this just once when using a different stovetop and the lowest flame was way to low than what you’d find on a regular stove top.
Homemade Tortilla Chips – Take 2
I must say, I was really pleased with this take on homemade tortilla chips and I know for a fact that this will be my go to recipe in the future. For starters, the process was considerably shorter that the first version. These chips can be made ahead of time and stored in an airtight container. They don’t absorb much oil and are nice and crunchy. A note of caution, these are so darn good, you won’t be able to stop munching on them just the way they are. We went though half of the quantity without even making a single portion of nachos with them. They make fantastic nibbles.
Tortilla Chips
Recipe from: Soups, Salads & Starters by Nita Mehta
1 1/2 cup corn meal (also called maize flour or makki ka atta)
1 cup all purpose flour
2 tbsp oil
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp carom seeds (ajwain)
Mix all the ingredients in a large bowl.
Knead into a pliable dough with water.
Make large marble sized portions and roll them out into thin discs.
Prick it all over with a fork.
Cut into wedges.
Heat some oil in pan and deep fry on a medium flame till they turn golden brown in color.
Drain them off on some absorbent kitchen paper.
When they’ve cooled off completely, store in an air tight container.
Use as needed.
This recipe is linked to –
Savory Sunday
Mangia Mondays
Hearth & Soul
A Little Birdie Told Me
Tuesdays At The Table
Sprouted Moong Salad
Savory Sunday
Mangia Mondays
Mouthwatering Mondays
Meatless Mondays
Just Another Meatless Monday
My Meatless Monday
How to make your own Mayonnaise
Its a very simple process, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. If we can do it, so can you. I did a little bit of reading before we tried it out and a lot of sources tell you to keep a 1:1 ratio. ie. 1 egg to 1 cup oil. Thats the basic. I suggest you tweak the flavor to your liking.
We made a double batch of this mayonnaise for the barbecue party and used it for both, the cole slaw and the cucumber salad. Both recipes to follow.
Homemade Mayonnaise
1 egg
1 cup oil
1 tsp. mustard
Salt to taste
Sugar to taste
A few drops of lime juice or vinegar
Put the egg, mustard, a pinch of salt and a little sugar into a blender.
Blitz for a few seconds to get it started.
Keeping the blender running, carefully and slowly add the oil in a stream through the top of the jar (the opening through which you can add liquids). Make sure that you add the oil slowly.
Once it starts thickening, stop the blender, taste adjust seasoning, add the lime juice or vinegar and blitz again for a couple of seconds.
NOTE: If you find that after thickening, the mayo looks like it has sort of split, don’t worry. This simply means you’ve added a little too much oil. Simply add another egg to it and blitz again. You may need a little more oil but add gradually only till it thickens.
While the 1:1 ratio works most of the time, its success also depends on the size of the egg. So start of with about 1/2 to 3/4 cup of oil. If you’ve reached the desired consistency, you can stop adding the oil. If you need more of it, feel free to do so.
Transfer to a clean and dry glass jar and refrigerate. I use this in salads, sandwiches, and other dressings as well.
I hope you try making your own mayonnaise at home.If you do, I’d love to hear how it worked for you.
This recipe is linked to –
Not Baaad
Meatless Mondays
Mouthwatering Mondays
Just Another Meatless Monday
My Meatless Mondays