Yeast Utilized: 2 and 1/4 teaspoons

My first truly stress-induced bake.  I mean, I can’t stop people from demanding their right to a haircut during a global pandemic, but I can bake…sort of. Basically, I felt the “need to knead.”

So, I tried to make Hawaiian Bread Rolls. I put on the “Hamilton” soundtrack and had a blast mixing up the dough (sans electric mixer–I do everything by hand on account of not, you know, owning a mixer). I then left it to rise for an hour.

But the dough did not rise.

Is this before proofing or after? Who knows? It looked exactly the same.

Bread Forensics! Examining the scene of the crime, I suspect that my warm ingredients were not sufficiently cooled and therefore killed my yeast.

So…what to do…? Unfortunately, this used most of the pineapple juice I had, so I decided to go ahead and bake this. Thought about a loaf. Then no, let’s go with the intended individual rolls, but not in the 13×9 pan the recipe dictates. (Why? I don’t know. It made sense at the time–it’s not rising, so it won’t need as much space to expand and hug each other???) So, I cut the dough apart into equal(ish) sizes and wedged them into an 8×8 pan.

But you know what that means? Yeah.

Baking took forever. After the recipe-suggested 30 minutes, I checked the middle and found DOUGH (all-caps DOUGH as in, “are you sure you’ve ever put this near an oven” DOUGH). So I just kept baking it and baking it, and put some foil over it so the top wouldn’t burn, and baked it, and it was 10:30 at night, and baked it.

And…

I mean.

There’s really no saving this one. It doesn’t taste bad, but it is not at all the creation it was meant to be. You know those soft, light, pillowy Hawaiian rolls at the store? Yeah… These might break your toe if you dropped them.

Sweet Hawaiian Bread ‘Rocks’ (instead of ‘Rolls’, rock ‘n’ roll, get it? I’m hilarious.)

My god. Look at how dense that bread is. Wow. So, Bread Forensics! As noted, I believe that my heated ingredients were not sufficiently cooled before adding them to my yeast mixture. But also, the 8×8 pan was probably a mistake. These still would have been little un-risen rocks of pineapple-tinged sweetness, but lordy, they wouldn’t have taken 90 minutes in the oven.

Also, maybe I shouldn’t stress bake. That’s a possibility, too.

April 24 – Addendum

Adapt and overcome. Hawaiian Bread Rocks become home-baked croutons.

To the next loaf—–>