Biscuits and Dinner Rolls

Baking used to scare me. I always thought any recipe with flour or yeast (especially yeast) was a disaster waiting to happen in the kitchen. Maybe I'm thinking to the time Carol and I tried to make pancakes and somehow we ended up with thick, hard pancakes. It was horrible. Emily and Cat would tease me saying how I can't make pancakes and somehow I generalized that to all things related to baking. I finally realized that it's not as bad as it seems.

Here are two recipes that I like to use. I found the biscuit recipe here. A friend gave me the dinner rolls recipe.

Easy, Flaky Buttery Biscuits

3 cups Flour

4 1/2 tsp Baking Powder

2 tbsp sugar

3/4 tsp cream of tartar

1/2 tsp salt

3/4 cup Butter, cold

1 eggs, slightly beaten

1 cup milk

Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Mix Dry ingredients together. Cut in cold butter, until it is pea-sized. Mix egg and milk and pour into dry mix. Stir together with a fork. Combine all the dry mix with the wet mixture until it forms a soft ball. Turn out onto a floured counter. Pat down until 3/4" thick (NOTE: rolling will keep it from being flaky). Cut biscuits out and place on an ungreased pan.

Bake for 10-15 minutes.

**These freeze really well. So I like to save some of the dough since we hardly ever eat a whole batch.

Dinner Rolls

1 1/8 cup warm water

2 Tbsp milk

2 tbsp butter, melted

4 tbsp sugar

3 cups flour

1 1/2 tsp salt

2 tsp yeast

In a large bowl dissolve sugar in warm water. Add milk and melted butter. Add yeast and stir briefly. Let it sit for about 10 minutes until frothy.

In separate bowl mix salt and flour. Stir in the water with yeast. Knead dough and let it rest for 20 minutes. Roll dough out on a lightly floured surface. Cut dough with biscuit cutter or whatever (I use a cup) and dip into melted butter. Fold each circle in half (well, not quite in half...it's more like 2/3 where the top overlaps the bottom) and place closely together in 8x8 pan.

Bake for 15-20 minutes at 375 degrees.