Fluffy Spelt Dinner Rolls

Well, I found a dinner roll recipe that I found quite intriguing.  Spelt, yes, love it, and... cottage cheese!  I think that counts as a roll recipe with a twist for sure.  And they turned out true to their name: beautifully fluffy, light, and tender.  I went with fresh ground spelt with the bran sifted out.  (Spelt has an awful lot of bran compared to white wheat, volumetrically speaking.  It has to do with the different geometry of the grains with spelt having a higher surface-area of bran, as well as softer endosperm that grinds down to flour quicker, leaving larger flakes of bran.)  Oh, and PSA* - store your grain in the freezer or at least freeze your grains for a week, then transfer to an airtight container.  I modified this recipe which I found on the Full Circle veggie box site, to use orange juice because it plays so well with whole wheat and indeed, whole spelt.  It has a little vinegar in it to stabilize the gluten, which is definitely nice for spelt, and also some chemical leaveners.  I was reminded of Ree Drummond's cinnamon roll recipe which also adds chemical leaven to yeast.  But that cottage cheese!  I hadn't heard of that before.  It supposedly contributes to a moist, tender crumb, and extended freshness.  I did not puree the cheese to break down the curds at all, and even with small curd, it took the whole kneading process to break them up.  I think if the curds had been larger, I might have blitzed it a couple pulses in the blender or with an immersion blender, but it turned out beautifully without doing that this time.  These are 100% whole grain, but not at all stodgy.  They have a nice, light texture, beautiful, lightly sweet flavor from the spelt and honey, and that brilliant tenderness from the cottage cheese.  I am going to freeze the rest for Thanksgiving!

Tip for working with spelt flour, especially whole spelt: spelt gluten is delicate and can break down with over kneading.  Once the dough goes from firm and bouncy to loose and soupy, it's too late and there is no saving it as bread.  Well, at least not as anything but dense bread, even if more flour is added.  I would suggest turning it into crackers if the gluten breaks.

Fluffy Spelt Dinner Rolls
makes 12 rolls 

¼ cup orange juice
1 tsp apple cider vinegar
¾ cup cottage cheese
2¼ tsp active dry yeast
2½ - 3 cups spelt flour or emmer flour  (I used around 375g of freshly ground spelt flour, bran sifted out.  Pretty much the full 3 cups.)
¼ tsp baking soda
½ tsp baking powder
1 tsp sea salt
2 tbsp honey
1 egg
1 tbsp butter, room temperature  

Preheat the oven to 375ºF.  Grease a 9 x 13 baking dish with butter.

In a mixing bowl, combine the yeast, 1 cup flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt and honey.

In a medium saucepan, heat the orange juice, apple cider vinegar and cottage cheese until warm, about 110 degrees. This will take about 2 to 3 minutes. Add in the flour mixture and stir well until it looks like a thick paste.

Add 1½ cups flour, the egg and butter.  Mix by hand or in a stand mixer until combined, then cover and let sit for 5 minutes.  Knead on low for about 7-8 minutes. Add additional flour if needed, a few tablespoons at a time, until the dough is bouncy and starting to clean the edges of the bowl but still somewhat tacky.  Do not knead too long or the gluten will break down.

Cover and set the dough aside in a warm, dry place and let rise to almost twice its size, about 1 hour.

Turn the dough onto a lightly floured surface and punch down to remove any bubbles. Divide the dough into 12 equal portions.  (It's okay to eyeball or do this by weight as you prefer.)  Shape each piece into a smooth round ball and place into the prepared baking dish, about 1 inch apart. Cover and let rise again, about 30 minutes.

Bake rolls for 12-15 minutes until golden brown.  (Mine took 17 minutes, glass dish.)  Best served warm.

I left mine on the tacky side.

Spelt rises enthusiastically!  (90 minutes
in an oven on proofing setting.)

Keep your hands and board floured for ease of shaping.

Second rise in cold kitchen took longer
compared to first rise in oven.  But still
only about 40 minutes.

Light and tender texture, delicate flavor.
Just a lovely dinner roll.

Be sure to check out the rest of our rolls with a twist:

• Beetroot Honey Oats & Semolina Bread Rolls: Sneha’s Recipe
• Cranberry Cream Cheese Sourdough Dinner Rolls:  Zesty South Indian Kitchen
• Fluffy Spelt Dinner Rolls: A Messy Kitchen
• Lussekatter:  A Day in the Life on the Farm 
• Ostesnurrer - Danish Cheese Twists:  Food Lust People Love
• Pumpkin Milk Bread:  Passionkneaded
• Small Batch Parker House Rolls: Karen's Kitchen Stories
   

#BreadBakers is a group of bread loving bakers who get together once a month to bake bread with a common ingredient or theme. You can see all our lovely bread by following our Pinterest board right here. Links are also updated after each event on the #BreadBakers home page. We take turns hosting each month and choosing the theme/ingredient.

 * I had been trying for a while to use up an old large bag of spelt that was not the best quality, but threw it out today when I discovered the grain was full of flour mites when I went to shake the detritus out of it and saw them crawling all over the sink like little moving dust specks.  Absolutely disgusting.  This bag had been knocked open out in the garage more than once and was years old.  Plus it had husks and other weird grains in it from the start.  Really poor quality, but I would have used it up without the bugs.  Fortunately I had better quality spelt stored in the freezer.