How I roll

A few years ago, I resolved to learn how to bake bread. I even embarked on a (quickly abandoned) attempt to keep up my own sourdough starter. That was foolish, as those were my harder-partying days, and the only thing I did every day without fail was smoke lots of cigarettes. I did learn to love the process of baking bread (with yeast packets) back then, but fell away from it in the intervening years.
This year I fell in love with Mark Bittman's recipe for no-knead bread, and I've made it dozens of times. Just around the time when that started to feel like cheating (it takes less than five minutes to assemble the four-ingredient dough), I saw an intriguing recipe on this blog for bread or rolls. The first rise happens while the dough is wrapped in a dish towel and submerged in warm water. It's haunted me ever since: that floating dough, wrapped neatly and adorably in a tea towel; its "satiny" consistency; those glossy, beautiful photos of the finished product...
We're having our first dinner party in the new (or new-ish--it's been eight months!) city tomorrow night--a birthday party for a new friend, with a total of five guests--and it's the perfect opportunity to try the wet-bread recipe.
So I made it today. I was thoroughly charmed by the first rise:
The charm was certainly amplified by the fact that, with uncharacteristic foresight, I used my only pretty dish towel to wrap the dough. It looks just like a pillow, dunnit? It was really cool, and I'm so glad I did it, even if the results were...well, keep reading.
Next step was to shape the rolls.

The white thing between the two rows is a little spool of crewel wool. I never trust myself to judge what "doubled" looks like when I'm baking bread, so since I was taking photos already, I decided I'd try this.
The dough was absolutely beautiful: satiny, like the lady said; glossy; smooth; golden-yellow. The pictures, of course, don't do it justice.
So they rose.

Looking back, I realize they could have risen a bit more. But I was bored and excited to see how they would turn out. And Husband is doing taxes (note the date--I've been pushing for an extension for at least the last week), so I felt compelled to at least appear industrious. So I mixed some milk with a beaten egg and brushed it over the little rolls. This was my favorite part of the recipe, after the tulip-towel pillow. The pillowy little dough balls yielded to the brush sumptuously, languidly springing back like sleep little 1970's porn stars. I know that's a lot of adjectives and the porn star image is out-there, but I can't help it. Bread dough is sexy like farmer's daughters are sexy: innocent, unspoiled, up for anything and ready to delight in whatever comes along. I'm trying to say this: it's not a dirty-sexy. It's a good-clean-fun-sexy.
So the pert domes baked away (sideways, here) and the house started to smell like yeasty, yummy rolls. This is a smell I closely associate with my mother, who makes the rolls for our family's Thanksgiving dinner every year. Her batch of roll dough is always huge, big enough for annual experiments with dried cranberries, orange zest, savory spices...and always, pecan rolls that never make it out of the kitchen before they're devoured by anyone lucky enough to be present when they come oozing and sizzling out of the oven.
Here is the moral of the story: although tonight's rolls came out looking lovely,
they were not as good as my mom's. The water-rise is little more than a gimmick, I fear. I am glad I tried it, but the next time I feel the urge to make dinner rolls of any kind, I'm going with my mom's good old-fashioned Better Homes & Gardens (she calls it the "red and white cookbook") recipe.

1 pkg active dry yeast
1/4 c. warm water
1 c. milk
1/4 c. sugar
1/4 c. butter
1 tsp salt
3 1/2 c. flour
1 egg, beaten

-Soften yeast in warm water. Combine milk, sugar, butter, and salt in large glass measuring cup in microwave. Heat until butter melts. Cool to lukewarm. Add 1 1/2 c. flour. Beat well with wire whisk. Beat in yeast and egg. Gradually add rest of flour to form soft dough, beating well with wooden spoon. Place in greased bowl, turning over to grease surface. Cover and let rise until double. (1 to 1 1/2 hours or you can refrigerate overnight or up to 5 days). Turn out on lightly floured surface and shape as desired. Cover and let rise until doubled (about 45 min. if at room temperature; 1 1/2 hours if refrigerated).
-For cloverleaf rolls, make three balls of dough--each ball should be the size of a grape--in each muffin tin. For pecan, raisin or orange rolls: roll 1/2 of dough into 8"x 12" rectangle. Spread 1/4 c. melted butter on dough. Sprinkle with mixture of 1/4 c. brown sugar or white sugar and 1 tsp. cinnamon. Roll up from long side. Cute into 12 slices. Place in 8" square pan.
Bake at 375 for 12 to 25 min.
-For pecan rolls, first heat mixture of 1/4 c. butter, 1/2 c. brown sugar, and 1 tbsp corn syrup in saucepan; pour into 8" pan. Sprinkle broken pecans in syrup. Place rolls on top, nestled into the pan.