Peachy Morning Rolls

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Let’s say you suddenly find yourself with far, far too much produce. You have 5 pounds of plums from less than 100 yards away, apples plucked off the tree at one of Skagit Valley’s best heirloom orchards, little pint sized buckets of blue mountain huckleberries and plump, organic blueberries.

If you are me, you still can’t resist getting 3 pounds of ripe, ripe end of season peaches for just $3 at the Ballard Farmer’s market that you just happen to be walking through on the way to buy used vinyl to play on your husband’s new turntable. You also would find yourself a bit short on time to do much with them, but still itching to do some baking.

I’ve been wanting to make more cinnamon rolls for a while now, and then I had the idea to add peaches to them. In an ideal, lots of time, no need for instant gratification world, I would have pulled up the Macrina bakery recipe… but if you remember, it takes 3 days before you are happily munching on your yummy, gooey treats. Luckily, there is a cinnamon bun recipe in Pure Flavor that caught my eye. The dough is a simple potato bread… something I’ve always wanted to try.

Technically, this dough should sit overnight in the fridge to rise. You’ll get a better flavor to the dough if you do this, but I was being impatient, and let it rise in a warm room for about 4 hours instead. In the original recipe, you just make little balls of dough, and roll them in a cinnamon brown sugar mixture to coat, and then bake them up like monkey bread. The resulting buns are something like hearty cinnamon sugar doughnut holes, the dough being particularly moist from the addition of the potato.

Rather than making little balls, I used the same dough to make rolls, with plenty of peach slices stuffed in. Each slice of the roll can then either be placed next to each other in a deep baking pan and topped with more sugary topping, or baked off in muffin tins for individual rolls that are easy to carry around.

When I baked these off individually, I didn’t add more topping… it’s too hard to keep it on each roll. Instead, I paid homage to the doughboy, and made an icing sugar glaze to spread on when the rolls are warm. If you make a whole batch for the week, don’t frost them until you are about to eat them… just zap the rolls in the microwave for 20 or 30 seconds and then glaze.

Now, if you want a little chuckle, just picture me rolling out the dough with Frampton Comes Alive! blaring in the background and me feebly singing along.

PS: Excuse the bumps while I refresh the site design! I’m close enough to leave it up now… but those of you on IE may have some pain for a day or so while I get around to testing on it…


Peachy Morning Rolls

Adapted from the Pure Flavor Cinnamon Bun recipe
Makes between 16 and 24 individual rolls, depending on the size of your muffin tin

I ran out of cinnamon before making these rolls, so instead substituted dried ginger and cardamom, which I can highly recommend if you are making these rolls with peaches or pears. But, go lightly on the spice in this case… a little cardamom and ginger is a nice touch, a lot and you won’t taste anything else for the rest of the day.

1 medium russet potato
2 t active dry yeast
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 t salt
6 T unsalted butter, melted
1 large egg
4 to 5 cups of all purpose flour
2-4 T of softened butter
1 cup brown sugar
1 T ground cinnamon
2 large peaches, pealed and sliced into wedges

Peel the potato and cut it into small pieces. Boil it in about`2 cups of water until tender. Strain the potato from the water, but keep the water. Set both aside to cool.

When the potato water reaches about 115F, add the yeast and let it sit for about 10 minutes to proof. While that’s sitting, mash the potato.

Mix together the yeast mixture, potato, sugar, salt, egg and butter until it is smooth. Add 2 cups of flour and continue to mix on low until it is incorporated. If you have a dough hook for your mixer, switch to it now. Scrape down the sides of the bowl. Then, with the machine on medium, add 2 cups of the flour, and let it incorporate. The batter should start to become a ball of dough. Continue to knead it for about 10 minutes. The dough will be moist, but basically soft and elastic. Add a bit more flour, if necessary, until it is no longer sticky to the touch but is still fairly moist.

Place the dough in a large plastic ziploc bag, and let it sit in the refrigerator overnight (or, if you are impatient like I was, place in a bowl lightly coated with oil, and cover with plastic. Let it sit for about 4 hours in a warm room).

Lightly grease your muffin tins.

After rising, knead the dough slightly on a well floured surface, then roll out to about a 16 x 9 inch rectangle, until it is just less than 1/2 inch thick. You may need to adjust this size based on your muffin tins. You want the end rolls to fit into them easily, as they will rise more when cooking. If your muffin tins are on the small size, roll the dough to be longer and narrower for a smaller roll diameter. (I don’t recommend going down to mini muffin size though… ). Dot the surface of the dough with the softened butter. Then, sprinkle the entire surface evenly with the cinnamon and brown sugar. Make sure to get the edges too. Place a row of peaches along the bottom edge.

Now, carefully roll the dough over the peaches (this is a bit tricky). Tuck another row of peaches into the edge of the fold you just created, and roll again. Continue doing this until you are either out of peaches or the dough is completely rolled up. I managed to get 3 rows of peaches in.

Pinch the log closed, and gently roll it to seal. Using a sharp knife, slice the log into pieces about 1 inch thick, and carefully and quickly place the slice into a cup of the muffin tin. When all of the slices are done, cover with plastic wrap and set aside. The dough should continue to rise. Let them sit for about 30 minutes

Preheat the oven to 350F. Bake the rolls for about 25 minutes, or until light golden brown. Let them cool on a wire tray in the tin for about 5 minutes, and then remove them from the tin and glaze if desired.

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0 thoughts on “Peachy Morning Rolls

  1. These look scrumptious. And I am loving your new studio 🙂 Lots of windows I see. I’ll have to try these this Sunday morning. I just can’t get enough peaches lately. It’s quite possibly the only fruit I want to eat lately!

  2. not to be technical, but the turntable I got is actually even cooler than the P2 that is on their website – it’s a P2, but a couple of years older, back when they still made the platter out of glass rather than MDF – woohoo! And it sounds even better now that I hooked up the tweeters on my speakers….

  3. I know what you mean! This time of year is crazy with beautiful, scrumptious produce, and we all know that soon it will be gone. How I wish we had more time to make jars and jars of preserves and jams and pickles so we could remember how wonderful it all was over the Winter! Sigh.

  4. Thanks folks… especially those that were being psychic about the new layout. What you saw was actually the default WordPress layout that got activated when I upgraded the version of WordPress on the site. But then, I decided to re-design the whole site today… and hey, I’m about done and it’s only 3am!!! Hope you enjoy it!

  5. I have been crazy dying to make a batch of cinnamon buns but when I saw these I just couldn’t deny them. They are definitely on my list. I just need to find the time to actually make them haha. But with that said, your photos are b-e-a-utiful and you blog is very very well done. I’m Cook & Eat addicted!

  6. These do look quite delightful, but being fairly new to baking yeasted bread, I was wondering if you could tell me what purpose the potato serves here? I’ve not yet come across this before 😀

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