Every weekend, I bake two large trays of sourdough bread rolls specifically for school lunches.
I make these using a simple folding and cutting technique, which I find much easier than more traditional methods for shaping individual rolls. The end result is a flat, oval roll which will hold a substantial amount of filling and withstand the rigours of a tossed backpack.
After baking, each roll weighs between 95 – 105g, the equivalent of three slices of bread. Filled with ricotta and smoked salmon, or in Small Man’s case, Vegemite, they’re the perfect size for school lunches.
. . . . .
After the dough has had its first rise, knock it back and stretch it out on a lightly oiled surface into a rectangle. The piece below weighed 1200g.
Fold one side of the dough in as shown…
…then fold the other side in over the top.
Using a serrated knife or a dough cutter, slice the dough into pieces. I cut 10 rolls from my 1200g of dough, judging the size of each piece by eye rather than bothering to weigh them.
Lay the rolls out on a lined baking tray. Place a sheet of parchment paper over the top of the rolls, and then cover with a tea towel. Allow to prove.
Before baking, I give each roll a single slash with my lame. I’m not convinced it makes any difference, given that my dough hydration is quite high, but it does make me feel like a proper baker when I get to wave my razor blade around.
These rolls freeze beautifully, which means I can bake a large batch once a week. And the boys love them – Small Man has already eaten two rolls off the cooling rack! Better get them in the freezer now, or I’ll have to bake another lot tomorrow…
Edit: a crumb shot for Sally!
Fig Jam and Lime Cordial 
Love it…..how do I start entertaining the idea of making sourdough bread here in Chile…..I have never seen sourdough here?
Jude, this shaping will work with regular yeasted bread too. If you wanted to start making sourdough, you could either try and grow your own starter, or purchase an already existing starter – I got mine from Northwest Sourdough in the US, and had it shipped to Australia. There is a great tutorial here if you wanted to try making your own (I never have, but many people have successfully grown their own).
Fair warning though – sourdough baking can be very addictive! :) There’s lots of info on Sally’s blog (Bewitching Kitchen) and Jo’s blog (Zeb Bakes) as well…
So glad you’re still enjoying the English muffins! :)
Celia
BTW…..made your english muffins….and one of my kids has even hidden some of them for later consumption! HUGE hit!!!
These look lovely. I usually just make loaf bread, but these would be perfect for sandwiches. Will have to give them a try :)
I’ll have to try that technique next time I make a batch of sourdough, it looks like a real timesaver Celia! What a gorgeous colour you get on those rolls :)
Can I be geeky and ask what flours you are using there?
It looks so amazing. I can’t wait to try it.
Tes, Sasha, thank you! I make loaves as well, but the boys prefer these for school lunches. Also saves me having to defrost a whole loaf every morning! :)
Joanna, not geeky at all! :) The dough is at 75% hydration and I made a large batch – about 2.7kg finished weight – which gave me 22 rolls. Flour used was 1150g bakers flour and 250g organic rye. There’s also 100g of extra virgin olive oil in there.
i’m curious, celia, what sort of system is there in your schools? here most institutions – preschool through highschool – make the school lunch mandatory. soon my daughter will go to preschool, and from what i can tell it’s mostly processed stuff. boxed mac and chese today, chicken nuggets tomorrow…
i very much appreciate this type of batch-cooking, no doubt i’ll develop a schedule when the time comes. and you’re right, it’s so much easier to fold and slice than to shape individual buns, thanks! and what’s vegemite?
Dana, I’m puzzled, does that mean the kids have to eat the lunch provided by the school? Or are you allowed to send in food from home?
Our schools usually have a school canteen, where kids can buy food if they so choose, but most bring a packed lunch from home.
Vegemite, aaah, it’s an Aussie national treasure. Very salty, black, yeasty sandwich spread made from the byproduct of beer manufacturing. It’s high in Vit B and to say it’s an acquired taste would be a massive understatement.. :)
well, it’s not black and white. the preschool i’m considering agreed in the end to let me pack her food. however, they refuse to deduct the price of food from her tuition. i visited two times during lunch and everybody had the same stuff on their plates. i doubt zhara will eat her soybeans when everybody else is having pizza… most elementary schools allow you to pack, but hardly anyone here does it. my friends’ kids refuse to take food to school, because apparently it’s lame.
Now that kind of organization is impressive! I will start baking bread, I will start baking bread. Actually – can I bribe you for a lesson in August?!! Name your price.
Nice idea!
Can I ask what kind of a crumb you get with this method?
I love folding dough, it seems to me doing the rolls like this you can get a pretty airy crumb
These look divine – any wonder the boys grab them, especially when hot and crusty. Oh yum.
What a wonderful mother you are. I bet there aren’t many others who get to have sourdough rolls for lunch. They look so lovely too.
Anna, I would love to give you a bread baking lesson! Let’s lock it in for August…
Sally, I’ve uploaded a crumb shot for you. The rolls have a lovely crunchy crust (but not too hard) and the crumb is holey and chewy.
Gill, I always have to bake extra! We usually end up eating all the rolls each week – this batch of 22 will all be gone by next Friday! :)
Choclette, thank you for the kind words! I’m blessed to have sons who like what I make, and I love that they’re getting specific about their food choices. Not in an expensive way – they don’t particularly enjoy eating in flash restaurants – but they’re able to tell me that they prefer a bit of rye or spelt in their sourdough, or Sicilian and Kalamata olives on their pizza (but not Ligurian). :)
Nice looking crumb! I made a batch of sourdough this morning, and got a little impatient with the proving so the crumb is no where near as lovely as yours. Lovely looking rolls.
How long did you leave it from mixing to baking?
Brydie, hours and hours. From memory, yesterday’s batch had a first rise of 6 hours, followed by a second rise of about an hour. My starter is really resilient over a long prove, and I’ll often leave the dough overnight and shape, rise again and bake in the morning. I think the holey crumb also has to do with how the dough is handled – as Sally pointed out, lots of folds as it’s rising will give more holes.
Geek again… So is your starter kept at 75 per cent hydration too? I”m going to beg now…. we just need to be reminded how you make your bread so we can all have a go at these scrunchy looking rolls… :)
Jo, I’ve always kept my starter at 1 cup by volume water to flour (I think that makes it 166% hydration). Very liquid, I know, but that’s how I started, and I’m loathe to rework the numbers for all my recipes.
Here are my “formulas”, the first is the one I usually make with dough at about 74% hydration, the second is a conversion I did to change to a 100% starter, and the dough hydration ends up at about 75%. I like to work in round numbers, as you can tell. :)
Starter at 166%, dough hydration 74%:
*200g starter (166%)
*400g water
*50g olive oil
*700g flour
*10g salt
Starter at 100%, dough hydration 75%:
*200g starter (100%)
*450g water
*50g olive oil
*700g flour
*10g salt
It’s worth mentioning that I’m quite a boring sourdough baker. I have a formula that works well, and I rarely diverge from it, although I will often size it up by 1.5 or 2x and play with the mix of flours. This is the recipe I use for my loaves, baguettes, rolls, stuffed rolls and various other sourdough breads. For pizza and fougasse though, I use a yeasted dough – I just find it works better.
I love your folding and cutting method. I usually make sourdough rye because I can’t get a loaf at the bakery that has all the elements I want- chewy texture, caraway seeds plus++ , and crisp crust and just a touch of molasses for an all-round flavor.
Do you start off with a sponge the night before, or just make up the dough entirely and allow it to raise for all of those hours? My starter sounds like yours- rather on the liquid side- but I like it that way for when I’m making sourdough pancakes.
I made another cottage loaf- actually I’ve made several loaves trying to get the smooth look of yours and I think I’ve finally achieved it! I’m going to put up a picture on my site.
Heidi, I never bother with a sponge. I do give my starter a couple of feeds before using though, until it’s really frothy and bubbly. My sourdough baking has become very utilitarian – it’s such a regular part of our routine now and I’ve become quite good at judging the dough, so I never bother to watch the clock or time my kneads. Having said that, I do have the most reliable starter! It’s the Northwest Starter from http://www.northwestsourdough.com and it puts up with so much from me. I can make the dough at night and leave it to bulk prove for up to 14 hours, and it will still be robust and spring in the oven for me the next morning.
Our excess starter is used for pancakes about twice a week. :) Looking forward to seeing your new cottage loaf!
Goodness me you’re such a conscientious mum Celia! How do you find the time? :)
Nothing boring about you my friend or your bread making :) It sounds like perfect mindful work to me. A light touch and a kind heart and away you go x
Hi Celia,
Thanks for your rolls. I usually break slices off the loaf out of the freezer each day to take to work, but this wiould be a great change – and hold fillings better. They look great. I was interested in your shaping. I was wondering if you find that they spead much given that the hydration is quite high and there has been no “work” put on each piece to tension up the surface.
Always love your posts.
Cheers,
Craig
Lorraine, you’re sweet. :) It only takes me an hour or so actual hands-on time – the rest is just letting the dough prove on its own…
Thanks Jo. :) Although really not sure about the mindfulness – more automatic now! :)
Craig, interestingly no. I was trying to achieve a flatter roll – I find that round rolls will turn into little balls in the oven, which isn’t really ideal for lunches. So sometimes I’ll try to flatten the slices of dough out even further when I lay them down, but I’ll still get them rising a bit in the oven rather than spreading outwards. I’m never sure how much of this is due to shaping and dough handling, and how much is the influence of the starter itself.
Now that I can think about filling a freezer again, going to schedule this for the start of the new school year in August! Your shaping technique sounds just the thing for this slapdash baker.
Nancy, you’re hardly slapdash! :) But I do find this a lot easier than shaping lots of rolls individually…
Thanks for the pics. This looks like a much easier and faster way of shaping up some rolls, than individually shaping each roll. Since I usually do my loaf and roll shaping at about 5.30am before going to the gym, every minute counts…and means that I will get a few more minutes sleep in – has to be a winner! I think this shape will work better for my kids little jaws too. Tomorrow’s batch will be an ode to Celia….
You do know I wrote this post just for you, don’t you, SG? :) Hope the kids are on the mend!
Waw,…Celia!! These bread rolls look delightful & so appetizing too!
Yum,..Yum,..yum,..I so love their shapes !!!
Hi Celia,
My boys would like to thank you (though they don’t realise they are doing so!) for so many of the great recipes we’ve sampled from here. I would like to thank you for your down to earth approach and willingness to share! It’s so lovely to try new things or old things new ways! I tried my Bap recipe with this technique for rolls and they fit the lunch boxes perfectly…teamed with just picked lettuce and tomatoes – is there any better? Except maybe chocolate – though that is not so great on a sandwich. (In a hot roll maybe…)
Anyway, I wanted to ask if you had some advice on consistency/texture. Now that my starter is working to give me the lovely tang in flavour, I am keen to get the consistency right and thus far I have only managed dense (but not overly heavy) versions of regular bread, not the lovely swiss cheesey type loaves we see in your pics.
I also wondered how you freeze your bread and keep it in good condition. I appreciate the value in the bake day concept as baking during the week tends to be rushed and not the labour of love I treasure with time up my sleeve so wouldl ike to freeze a few loaves of a weekend for use during the week.
Sorry for the novella…I love talking almost as much as being in my garden or kitchen!
Kind Regards,
Ray PJ
Hi Ray! Thanks for stopping in to say hi. :)
It’s good to know the fold and cut technique for rolls works with soft doughs as well – must try it next time, thank you!
In regards to freezing the bread – I freeze it after baking, either in whole loaves or in rolls in plastic bags – I defrost and fill them for school (ie. I don’t fill them before freezing). I find the sourdough defrosts perfectly, with very little loss in quality.
Re the texture of the sourdough, I’m a little less knowledgeable, but I do have a couple of suggestions. I always wait until the starter is very active and bubbly – I’ve never been able to make great bread with a sluggish starter. The other thing which seems to make a difference is the hydration of the dough – I always work with a very wet dough, which seems to result in more holes in the finished loaf than a stiffer dough. Hope this helps! :)
Cheers, Celia
It does help…thanks! And thanks for posting your basic sourdough recipe…I was going to ask about that too but thought I had taken up enough space…and I realised it was here in the comments!
How long do you cook these rolls for? I know you don’t weigh them before but how big are they before baking d’ya reckon? Still working on mine… :)