Pine Nut and Mozzarella Bread Rolls

Again I have brought out the pine nuts for another recipe.  It has been awhile since I have eaten homemade dinner rolls, but I was in the mood for something with some flavor, instead of just plain bread.  While there are are lot of herbed breads and rolls out there, I still wanted something different but I did not want to go so far as to have an extreme ingredient in them.  By extreme, I mean something that you have to special order or go to a gourmet shop to get.

I was flipping through some cookbooks and came across this recipe.  While this recipe did not have any picture to entice me, it still had some interesting ingredients.  I have made bread with cheddar, but never mozzarella.  And yes, that is mozzarella in the photo-not butter!

While these rolls were not eye catching on the surface, I do believe that the inside makes up for that!  The fluffy bread, stringy mozzarella and crunchy pine nuts did come together to make a tasty bread roll.  In fact, I ate one and then tucked them away for dinner.  I did crave several more, but I left the house to so some things outside to take my mind off of these.  It was not easy, especially since I was the only one the actually knew how many I made.  The original recipe below makes about 16 rolls. It is best not to reveal this number when you make them.  That way you can enjoy a few by yourself without inquiring minds!

Before you get into this recipe, I just wanted to give a shout out of thanks to Lacy at NY City Eats for passing along an award called: Irresistible Sweet Blog.  I was so happy to receive this particular one!  Lacy is a culinary graduate and I would like to see her succeed and find her special place in the culinary world. She does have creative talent for flavor fusion and is very comfortable making savory as well as sweet dishes. A few that come to mind are Lobster Eggs Benny and the Boozy Apple Pear Tart. So stop on in and say hi to Lacy at NY City Eats, I am sure her creations will make you appreciate the Big Apple a little bit more!

 Pine Nut and Mozzarella Bread Rolls
adapted from Baking Bread: Old and New Traditions

Ingredients/ Sponge

1/3 cup wheat bran (I ground up bran cereal)
3 cups all purpose or bread flour
1 tbs or 1 package yeast
2 1/2 cups of warm water

Ingredients/Bread Dough
1 recipe of prepared sponge (above)
8 oz mozzarella, cut into 1/2 in cubes
1 1/2 to 2 cups warm water
1/4 cup olive oil
1 cup pine nuts
2 tsp salt
Egg wash-1 egg, 1 tbs water, pinch of salt

To make sponge, fill the bowl of a stand mixer with the warm water and sprinkle the yeast on top, then stir until it dissolves.  Add the rest of the sponge ingredients and beat, using the paddle attachment for about 1 minute.  The mixture should be smooth with no dry streaks of flour.  Cover and let set at room temperature for a minimum of 4 hours.  You can make it up to 3 days ahead and then refrigerate after the 4 hours.  Let come to room temp before using to make dough.

To create the dough, add the olive oil, 1 cup of flour and salt to the sponge mixture.  Beat at medium speed for about 1 minute.  Continue to add flour in 1/4 cup intervals, beating for 1 minute after each addition.  The dough should come to a point where it pulls away from the sides of the bowl.

Change out the batter blade to a kneading hook and knead, using the mixer on medium for 2 minutes. Then form dough into a ball and place in a greased bowl and turn to coat the top.  Cover and let rise at room temp until tripled in volume about 2-2 1/2 hours.

During the rise time, preheat the oven to 325 degrees.  Place pine nuts in oven and let toast for about 8-10 minutes.  Remove and set aside to cool.  Turn off oven. Also, line two baking sheets with parchment paper.

After dough has tripled, punch down.  Lightly dust a flat surface and roll out dough to a large rectangle.  Sprinkle pine nuts evenly over the surface, then press lightly to adhere.  Then place the cheese cubes evenly on the surface, pressing them down also.

Fold the dough over and knead so that the cheese and pine nuts are evenly distributed.  Then separate the dough into 16 pieces and shape into a tight round.  Make sure that the cheese chunks are sufficiently covered by the dough.  Place each piece one inch apart on the prepared baking sheets.

Cover rolls lightly with plastic wrap and let rise for 45 minutes. During this time, preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

 After the rising time, remove plastic wrap. Then take a pair of kitchen shears and snip the top of the roll in a row of three snips.  Place pans in oven and bake for 10 minutes. Rotate pans from front to back and top to bottom after the 10 minutes and bake for another 5 minutes. Remove bread from oven.

Stir the egg wash with a fork so it has a little froth.  Then brush egg wash across the top of all of the bread rolls.  Place them back in the oven to bake until done, about 5-10 minutes more.

These are best eaten the same day they are baked.

Observances:
My dough was sticky to work with the whole time
For a high rise roll, it is important that the dough is made small and tight when put on baking sheet
It is inevitable that some mozzarella will seep out in baking, but due to parchment it will not burn and does not harm the taste.
These rolls do not turn very brown when baking.
                 **LAST YEAR: Date Bar Pie**                   
  

Great Basin Muffins

I was up in the attic the other day and I saw a bag of scented pine cones that I had bought for Christmas.  They still smelled faintly of cinnamon.  Then I began to wonder about how much pine cones are used as decorations at Christmas instead of being harvested for the nuts.

I started looking into information on pine nuts and found out that they are very difficult to harvest.  In fact, the nuts are bad by the time the pine cone has fallen.  Like the pecans, this nut was also a staple in the diet of Native American Indians hundreds of years ago.  The tribes that harvested these were located between the Rockies and the Sierra Nevada, originally referred to as the Great Basin.

Apparently, the Indians were on to something.  The pine nut has 20 amino acids.  In the list of the acids, eight are essential building blocks of protein.

The cake part of these muffins are flavored with lemon and honey.  Also, included inside are honey roasted pine nuts.  The topping is a honey lemon sauce sprinkled with pine nuts.  The topping should  be used only at the time of serving.  Due to its honey content, it is sticky so if you are going to store the muffins, you definitely do not want to use the sauce.  This recipe makes 1 dozen muffins.

Great Basin Muffins
by flourtrader

Ingredients/Honey Roasted Nuts
3/4 cup pine nuts
2 tbs honey
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
2 1/4 tsp butter
pinch of salt

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.  Line the bottom of a baking sheet with foil and spray with non stick spray.

Then place all ingredients, except for pine nuts, in a microwave bowl.  Microwave for 20 seconds.  Then stir and microwave for another 20 seconds.  By this time, the butter should be completely melted.  Stir until all ingredients are blended and liquid is smooth.  Then fold in the pine nuts, making sure they are completely coated.

Pour mixture onto foil and spread out so the nuts form an even layer.  Then place in oven to bake for about 5 minutes.  Remove pan and then stir the nuts.  Repeat this process 3 more times and remove from oven to let cool.  Once the nuts have cooled to room temperature, break them up so you have single separated nuts instead of clumps.  If you are having sticking issues, that is ok.  Once the nuts are broken up, cover and  place in freezer until ready to use.  This will keep them from clumping.

Ingredients/Muffins

3/4 cup of honey roasted pine nuts
1 cup of honey yogurt
2 eggs
1/3 cup butter, melted at room temperature
1 tbs lemon zest
1/4 cup plus 2 tbs lemon juice
1/2 cup sugar
3 tbs honey
2 cups flour
1/4 tsp salt
2 1/2 tsp baking powder

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.  Prepare your muffin tin by using non stick spray on a paper towel and then coating the top edge of the cavities.  You can either line with paper baking cups or spray the inside of the cavities with the non stick spray.

Beat together the eggs and the yogurt. Then stir in add the zest, juice and honey.  Lastly, mix in the butter until all is smooth.

In another bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder and salt.  Mix in the sugar until evenly combined.  Form a well in the center and pour in the egg mixture.  Stir until no more dry streaks remain.  Then fold in the honey roasted pine nuts until they are evenly distributed throughout the batter.

Using an ice cream scoop or spoon, scoop batter into muffin cavities, filling 3/4 full. Place pan in oven and bake until tester comes out clean, about 12-15 minutes.  Remove and transfer muffins to rack to cool.

These are ready to serve as is or store for eating at a later time.  Should you opt to have the warm honey lemon sauce on top, the recipe is below.

Ingredients/Honey Lemon Sauce
1/4 cup honey
2 tbs lemon juice
1/4 tsp corn starch
3/4 cup plus 2 tbs powdered sugar
1/4 cup pine nuts (for sprinkling)

In a saucepan placed over medium high heat, add the honey and the lemon juice.  Let come to a boil and then turn down heat. Let simmer for about 3 minutes, stirring constantly.   Remove from heat and then stir in cornstarch.  Sift 1/4 of the powdered sugar into the mixture and stir until smooth.  Continue adding the sugar in increments and stirring until it is all mixed in. Place a spoonful of the sauce on top of the muffins and sprinkle a few pine nuts over the sauce.  Another option is to serve the sauce on the side for dipping pieces of the muffin into.  You can back off the powdered sugar content if you prefer a stronger honey/lemon flavor.
                **LAST YEAR: Ricotta Pancakes**