Our life in Oklahoma: We shall rise and overcome (if your room is warm enough)

I've had a problematic history with making yeast bread. Last year for Thanksgiving, I called my aunt to get her yeast roll recipe to make for dinner. And I served up hot rocks on the table. They didn't rise and well, they were quite thick and almost crust like. Not exactly very good.

So I decided to take a bread class at the local vo-tech school. I was very excited to find a series of classes, the first being yeast breads. I paid my $25 and was very excited. Then, much to my dismay, the class was cancelled the night before due to lack of enrollment. I absolutely could NOT understand a lack of enrollment. Who doesn't want to learn to make their own yeast bread?

So I found a yeast roll recipe that gave very explicit instructions and I ripped it out of the magazine to give it a try at a later date. I completely forgot about it until I was rifling through my collection of recipes (tear outs, scraps of paper, computer print outs) and found it. So I thought I'd try it for Thanksgiving.

It took me all afternoon to make these 21 rolls, but by golly, they were perfect! And I think I understood the problems I was having before. First, I wasn't letting my original mixture of yeast activate before adding it to my dough. Second, I didn't have my dough in a warm enough room for it to rise. According to some research, if I mix my yeast with water that is too hot, it will kill the yeast! Well, no one told me that! And apparently, the hot water out of my tap is too hot. I had to let it cool down to the desired temperature.

Also, I'm supposed to let it rise in a room that's 85 degrees. Where on earth am I going to find a room that's 85 degrees? If it were summer time, I'd put it in the garage. But it's not. It's 30 degrees outside. So I left it sitting on top of the stove but I wrapped it in a towel and so it didn't have direct heat. And apparently, that did the trick.

I've been producing rocks before because my dough wasn't actually ever rising. So I rolled the dough into balls and let it rise again! I let the dough rise 3 times! (see why it took all day) Well, it turned out the most fabulous, soft, melt in your mouth rolls. And I topped them off with a little homemade honey butter. Of all the things I cooked on Thursday (mom's cornbread dressing, perfect pumpkin cheesecake), I was most proud of my rolls. I guess I need a more scientific approach than just "add warm water, let it sit, cook it till it looks right."