Homemade Dinner rolls/ Pav Buns

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Soft and fluffy dinner rolls made using the Tangzhong method. These dinner rolls make great pav buns too, and are eggless.

The best homemade dinner rolls/ pav buns

There is nothing like hot fresh dinner rolls from the oven and today I am sharing a recipe for homemade dinner rolls/ pav buns that uses the Tangzhong method.

I had read about the Tangzhong method and always wanted to try it. Its a bread making technique that originated in Japan (and popularized by a Chinese cookbook author), where the flour is first mixed with water, cooked to make a roux, cooled and then added to your bread dough ingredients. The result is a soft and fluffy bread that remains soft for longer than the one made the regular way.

The chemistry behind the tangzhong method is interesting and one that Jenni from Pastrychefonline.com explains very well. She explains in the post that the bread is moist because of the water content in it. By cooking the flour with the water you help the starch molecules hold on to the water, and at the same time keep a portion of the flour in your dough from strengthening their gluten bonds, giving the resultant bread a slightly tender crumb. That doesn’t mean that your bread will lack structure. Since only 5-10% of the total flour used in the recipe is used in Tangzhong, you get the structure from the rest 95%, and yet get a tender and moist bread.

The best homemade dinner rolls/ pav buns

The other day when I was trying to look for pav buns/dinner rolls recipe and saw that Gayathri from Gayathricookspot.com used the tangzhong for her pav buns, I knew I wanted to make it. I have a good whole wheat dinner roll recipe on the blog, but you know how much I love trying new recipes, so decided to give this pav bun/dinner rolls recipe a try. Even though I always try to make my breads more whole wheat, this time I decided to not substitute any of the flour with whole wheat. I was making pav bhaji and wanted it to be exactly street style, where the pavs are never whole wheat, but the less healthy maida/all purpose.

The dinner rolls came out so perfectly soft and fluffy. The tangzhong method also yields bread thats remains softer for longer, unlike most homemade breads that become hard in a day or two. Unfortunately or fortunately, there was nothing left of the dinner rolls for me to test that theory. My dad who had been out of town and only arrived at dinner time to eat the pav bhaji, didn’t realise till I told him that the pav is also homemade. He thought they were store bought pav buns.

In case you are wondering how I served the pav buns, here it is. Click on the picture for the recipe for pav bhaji.

The best homemade dinner rolls/ pav buns

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Homemade Rye Bread

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Homemade Rye Bread

Homemade Rye Bread | The Novice Housewife

Its been a rough start to the new year for our family. Two weeks back I lost my grandmother to cancer. A few days back my grandfather (my nanaji)  took his last breath after suffering from dementia. My mom lost both her parents in a span of two weeks and my heart goes out to her, my uncle and aunt.

The quick succession in which I lost two grandparents shook all of us but we are all finding solace in the fact that both their sufferings have come to an end. It is kind of sweet how they lived and left together. Hope they are both resting in peace together wherever they are.

I don’t have many memories with my nanaji. Since he lived in Canada with my uncle and would not visit India as often I did not get to spend too much time with him. When I went to Canada for my course two years back, his dementia had started to kick in, so I missed an opportunity to get to know him better. He mostly kept to himself, reading the Granth sahib and praying. Occasionally we would talk, but the next day he wouldn’t remember our conversations and ask the same questions again. And while I never got to know him too well, he was very close to my mom. And I am glad she was able to make it to Canada in time to spend his last moments with him.

Homemade Rye Bread with carom seeds | The Novice Housewife

This recipe was supposed to go up during the weekend, but with all that was happening I was not able to post. Even though its Tuesday and I generally share an indian recipe, I am sharing the recipe for this rye bread today.

2016 introduced me to homemade rye breads. I first experimented with a spelt and rye bread (and will be sharing that recipe as well soon) and loved the taste. I then tried my hand at this light caraway studded rye bread. I did substitute the caraway seeds for carom seeds. Even though the two seeds don’t have similar tastes and are not substitutes, I have enjoyed eating breads in India that add carom seeds and since thats all what I had in my pantry the day I was making this bread, I experimented with carom seeds in the recipe. I did not mind the substitution at all.

The recipe that I used is from the second issue of the magazine Bake from Scratch. While the recipe called for light rye flour I used dark, and also as mentioned I used carom seeds instead of the caraway seeds, though traditional rye bread uses caraway seeds.

Working with rye you should know that rye dough is not as elastic as wheat-based dough. The more percentage of rye flour you use in your dough, the more slowly it will rise. So patience is the key to success for rye breads.

There are certain health benefits associated with rye flour. Rye bread fills you up, suppressing your desire to eat. It also doesn’t spike your blood sugar levels (source : livestrong.com). Of course it doesn’t mean you are allowed to eat it as much as you want- anything in excess is never good. But, rye bread is better than a 100% white flour bread. Plus, the rye flour takes your regular flour bread and gives it a distinct flavor, which I really enjoyed.

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STUFFED MUSHROOM AND SPINACH PIZZA BREAD

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Stuffed Mushroom and Spinach Pizza Bread | The Novice Housewife

Wishing all the readers of The Novice Housewife a very happy New Year and lots and lots of good food like this stuffed mushroom and spinach braided bread.

2014 was not too great blogging wise. I did not post as often as I would have liked to. I wasn’t  even able to visit my favorite blogs and see what my favorite bloggers were up to. I got 52 posts up which if you aggregate means one post per week, but in reality it was only the first half where I was active and the past few months hardly saw this space getting much action- maybe one post a month. In 2015, I want to change that.

A lot of new exciting things happened in 2014. It was a period of a lot of stress as well. A lot of decisions were taken, changed, re-taken and then stuck to, with a lot of apprehension. One of the biggest change was The Pink Cakebox (only after coming up with the name did I realize there was already a pretty famous pink cake box in US, which is pretty stupid on my part since being obsessed with cakes I should have known. But I went ahead with it nonetheless, since I couldn’t turn back- mine has THE and its in India so I am hoping nobody gets confused. Yikes!) More about TPC (The Pink Cakebox) in another post because I think it deserves a lot of of explaining to do. But yes 2014 was the year it came to existence (a dream five year in the making). You can keep up to date with that chapter by liking its facebook page or following me on TPC’s instagram.

That’s essentially was (and still is) what kept me busy most of 2014.

This new venture also introduced me to new people- and I realized complete strangers can be so helpful. The experience made me wiser, at the same time made me doubt myself on multiple occasions. But slowly I am gaining confidence and growing and learning with each order. The whole ordeal of the past few months has made me a much stronger individual. And I am very grateful to the people I have in my life- my family and friends who made me stick through it and picked me up when I was ready to give up. And I have needed to be picked up a lot of times.

I moved back to India also last year. Temporary for now. While V was busy with his MBA I needed to sort out my life and pursue my passions more seriously. 2015 will see how it all unfolds.

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