Baking Disaster/Baking Triumph--for Melanie

Sunday morning I was supposed to bring in some sort of snack for my father's Sunday School class to enjoy. I had several ideas last week of what I might make, but I settled on Overnight Bubble Bread, a recipe to be found in Not Just Beans, a cookbook given to me by my cooking/homemaking mentor, Melanie.

It's a simple recipe in which you may dip partially thawed frozen rolls in melted butter, followed with a fragrant mixture of sugar and cinnamon. The bread then rises overnight, to be baked for half an hour in the morning. Very simple.

Or it might have been, had I read the package directions for the frozen dough instead of relying on what was written in the book. Perhaps the refrigerator rising method works perfectly well for the dough that can be made per another recipe in the book, but it doesn't work for the rolls you find in your grocer's freezer case. Here's what happened:

The book said to let the frozen rolls thaw for fifteen minutes before assembling the recipe. I did this, of course, but the dough was still frozen pretty solid by the time fifteen minutes had expired, so I put the entire bag in the microwave for some small amount of time (maybe as long as 5 minutes) on 30% power. Then I melted the butter in a cereal bowl.

Now I do several recipes where chicken is dipped first in a moistening agent, and then in dry breadcrumbs or some similar mixture. I have found in that process that it works better if I wash and dry my chicken and then coat all of the pieces in the moistening agent before starting to dip them in the crumbs. This helps me avoid getting crud caked on my fingers, and it's faster. I thought I'd do the same with my frozen rolls.

It didn't work the same way.

By the time I had dipped several rolls, I realized that the butter had been frozen in the process, and frozen butter does not hold spices well at all. That's what I learned Saturday night. Sunday morning I learned that frozen rolls will not rise in the fridge. They need a much warmer temperature to activate the yeast.

Sunday afternoon I learned something new.

I had used the entire bag of frozen rolls to make my bubble bread, so my grandmother's bunt pan was filled to the top with little frozen pellets. By the time we made it home from church that afternoon, the top of the oven, where I had left the rolls to rise, looked like it had been overtaken by tribbles!

Puffy bread dough was everywhere, spilling out of the pan. We tried to push some of the dough back into the pan with our fingers, but all that did was cause some of the dough to fall. When I say fall, I mean the dough went flat, and did not rise again.

I didn't have time to bake the bread that afternoon, and I was afraid that the recipe had turned into a disaster. Next morning all the dough appeared to have fallen. I threw it in the oven anyway for the requisite amount of time at the requisite temperature.

The breakfast treat that came out of the oven was delicious, like a cinnamon roll large enough to feed several people. It would have been even better had I used chopped nuts, which were optional to the recipe.

Next time I try this recipe I'll do it right and see what comes out.

My kitchen still smells like yeast.