96 rolls

Our ward Christmas Party was last week. With the boundary changes and all the new callings and everything else happening at the end of the calendar year, the volunteer planners had exactly two weeks to pull something together. I was actually amazed at what they were able to do in so little time since 95% of the work was done by a small cluster of people who worked very hard for several days in a row to pull it off.

This year, I was asked to help make homemade rolls for the dinner.

"Sure," I thought, "I can totally make 90 rolls in two weeks."

The reality is, I made 6 batches of rolls in 3 days and froze them until the night of the dinner.  And I'm so stinking proud of my accomplishment that I took pictures and wanted to post them here.

Yes, I'm a food geek! Incurable, by the way, especially with folks at America's Test Kitchen churning out fantastic, nearly foolproof, recipes that create exactly what they describe. This is why I love ATK so much. This was the first time I had made any of these three recipes and they turned out perfectly! I don't trust any other cookbook that much.

"Rustic Dinner Rolls" with a crisp exterior and moist, light, chewy interior. The dough is really wet, a lot like artisan bread, and the result is similar to artisan bread: chewy and perfect for smearing with stinky cheese.

"Multigrain Rolls" with a crackly crust and a denser, slightly sweet interior crumb. Multigrain rolls are often too dense or dry, but these performed really, really well. Even with less than half of the flour being white flour. The drawback is lots and lots of rising time.

The third recipe I tried was for "Classic White Dinner Rolls." They were intoxicatingly rich, buttery, light, and fluffy. I did not snap a picture of them :(

The pressure was uncomfortable, but the challenge itself was fun, and I enjoyed myself in the end. Now I know I can do something like that. Think of the possibilities!