hello this is chef john from food wishes daikon with pumpkin dinner rolls that's
right have you ever been eating a batch of freshly made dinner rolls and thought
to yourself these are really good but I wish they had taken longer to make and
look like little pumpkins well probably not but after watching this video that
could actually happen and while it is true these are a little more
labor-intensive those looks of wonderment and smiles on your guests
faces more than make it worthwhile so with that let's go ahead and get started
with this very simple dough and that'll begin with some warm milk okay not room
temperature not hot somewhere in between and then over that we will sprinkle one
package of dry active yeast plus a tablespoon or so of honey all right
exactly how much depends on how sweet you want these but generally a holiday
dinner roll should have a little bit of sweetness to it and then we're also
gonna want to add a generous amount of melted butter
preferably from cows and a grass for a living and then we will go ahead and
give that a quick stir before finishing this up with our flour and as usual we
will hold a little bit back so we can knead that in later all right if you
only remember one thing from this video it's that you should never add the
entire amount of flour call for in a recipe and then last but not least we
will add our salt and that's it we'll go ahead and take our most experienced
wooden spoon and start stirring all this together and we will keep stirring until
we formed almost a dough alright so we want everything to sort of pull together
but it's still going to be way too sticky to knead which is exactly what we
want because what we'll do when it does reach that stage is go ahead and
transfer that onto our work surface onto which we sprinkled the rest of our flour
and we will start kneading which is not going to be easy right away since this
is so sticky but as that dough picks up the flour on the surface it will become
less sticky and smoother and more elastic and if everything goes according
to plan eventually we will end up with a very soft fairly elastic but not too
sticky dough and by the way if your dough is picked up all that flour on the
surface and it's still sticky just sprinkle over some more and then keep
sprinkling until it's just right and one of the great clues you've added in
enough flour is that the dough will stop smearing and sticking onto your fingers
and the surface which is exactly what's happened here and at
this point we should be able to shape this into a ball of dough that holds its
shape and stays nice and round and sits up nice and perky and when we give it a
push with our fingers that dough springs back so that is looking just about
perfect and once that's been accomplished we'll go ahead and transfer
that into a lightly buttered Bowl and then we'll cover it and let it sit in a
warm place for about an hour and a half or until it doubles in size and then
while we're waiting for that to happen the other prep we could do would be to
cut some pieces of string about eight to ten inches long and we're gonna need
four per roll and once those are cut will transform into a bowl and toss them
in a little bit of vegetable oil and we just need enough to coat and I have no
idea why I poured so much in all right because if you're tossing these in the
oil is flying out of the bowl you added too much but anyway we'll go ahead and
coat our pieces of kitchen string and some oil at which point we'll simply set
those aside until we're ready to bind our balls of dough and then assuming our
dos risen we can go ahead and proceed to the next step
and by the way I forgot to mention I did butter the foil to cover this with just
to prevent sticking but anyway what we'll do is go ahead and
deflate our dough and then transfer to our table and sort of press it down into
some kind of uniform shape and thanks to this dough having so much butter in it
we probably don't have to flour the surface but if for whatever reason yours
is sticking go ahead and then once this was pressed down I went ahead and split
it in half since this recipe is gonna make twelve
portions but to make the filming a little easier I'm only gonna do six and
actually save that other half for some Danish experiments and then what we'll
do once we've cut this into some hopefully equal sized pieces is roll
each piece into a nice round ball and we do that by cupping our hand over the
dough and then we just sort of press it lightly and use a circular motion and if
you do that for about 10 or 15 seconds you should end up with something that's
beautifully round and relatively smooth so I did that all six of my portions at
which point we're gonna cover these and let them rest for 15 minutes and if you
don't have a bowl you could use a kitchen towel or some like the oil
plastic wrap and then once our dough has rested for about 15 minutes we can
proceed to tie it up and to accomplish that we will place
four pieces of string down as shown making sure that point in the center
where they all come together is very precise and then we'll go ahead and
transfer our dough on with a smoothest side down and then one at a time we'll
take each string and tie it together using a simple square knot at the top
and while we do want to fairly snug against the dough we don't want to do it
too tight where it's actually cutting into the dough and then once we've made
that knot at the top we'll go ahead and snip off the excess and I know it looks
like we're wasting string and we could have made these shorter but oiled string
is fairly hard to handle so having a little bit extra string does make things
easier and by the way there's two ways you can do this the slow but easy way
which is what we're using here or the fast hard way where you take one piece
of string and you wrap that around making one knot at the top but I really
do think this method even though it takes a little longer looks a lot better
once they're baked but anyway I'll explain more about that in the blog post
and it's really up to you to decide how to tie these I mean you are after all
the Matahari of your dinner roll shabari and once you get the swing of things
this really does not take that long oh and one word of warning if your sections
didn't come out perfectly even do not try to adjust it okay to my nature to
want to grab that string and try to move it over but that will not work
so as you're tying these try to get them as equally spaced as you can and as we
finish these we'll go ahead and transfer those onto a Silpat lined baking sheet
with the knot side down okay very important knot side down alright so I
went ahead and did that to all six of mine which really only took me about 10
minutes it just seemed like much longer and then what we'll do once all our
dough balls have been bound and panned is simply let them sit in a warm spot
for about 30 minutes or so which is when all the magic happens because what's
going to happen is these sit and that dough expands is that thanks to our
perfectly position strings we're gonna end up with what we call in the business
cleavage check it out and of course once these are baked that's gonna give them
their beautiful little pumpkin look and then to finish these off we're gonna do
two things both optional one would be to sift a little bit of flour over the top
to sort of give him that dusty dinner role look I like and also if we want we
could take a little bit extra dough and sort of roughly form it into these
little stem like shapes and by the way I've seen versions of this where for the
sad people we use things like pecans or some pumpkin seeds but personally I
think the dough looks better and these really do only take a few seconds to
shape and that's it once all that said these are ready to transfer into the
center of a 375 degree oven for about 25 minutes or until lightly browned and
looking like the most adorable thing you've ever seen oh yeah the cuteness
factor here is off the charts and then to finish these what we'll have to do is
remove the string but we have to let them cool before you do that all right
not all the way but wait till literally swarm otherwise you'll probably crush
them and once they have cooled down what we'll do is take our scissors and cut
through all four pieces of string at the top at which point we will carefully
peel down and remove those strings and yes I did practice on the first five
before filming this last one and what I learned was is make sure you pull down
all the way as far as you can go before flipping it over and then pulling out
that not all right so go slow and be careful but because we all that string
first it really does come out pretty easily and that's it once the strings
are gone we'll go ahead and cut a little hole in the top into which we will place
our stems and it was right here that I made my biggest mistake because what I
realized later is that the stem is the thickest where it attaches to the
pumpkin and then it tapers off so technically I am putting these in
upside-down but anyway I'm probably overthinking that and as I transfer
those onto a rosemary lime platter I really did think they look great and
trust me so will your guests and of course as I always like to remind folks
when we do something like this it does not matter how pretty or cool something
looks if it doesn't also taste amazing and thanks to a fairly classic dinner
roll dough these really did all right these are very light and buttery with
just a hint of sweetness and would pair perfectly with any of your holiday menus
and above and beyond serving these is a super cool look inside we could actually
slice these open and use them for a seasonal slider like maybe a citrus
infused pork and fennel sausage or maybe a little dry
cranberry studded turkey burger that would be cool oh and in related news I
may have just coined the term seasonal slider but anyway whether use these to
make gorgeous little sandwiches or just as a good old-fashioned delicious tea
and gorgeous to look at dinner Oh either way I really do hope you give these a
try soon so head over to food wishes dot-com for all the ingredient amounts
of more pho as usual and as always enjoy
you