These pillow-soft sourdough rolls are sure to become a dinnertime favorite. I’ve loved baking with sourdough for as long as I can remember, but in past years I found it challenging to keep my sourdough starter alive and as a result I’d end up discarding batches after long periods of neglect. All that changed the more I learned about sourdough and how it is not easy to actually kill the starter. Even if you’ve neglected it for a bit, it’s possible to bring it back to life so long as it isn’t moldy. This bread roll needs a well-fed, active starter, so be sure to use one you that is ripe and has been fed up to six hours before you start making the bread dough.
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Feed the sourdough starter the night before or the morning of – at least six hours before you start making the dough. For the perfect crust you need aquafaba (chickpea brine) in this recipe, and a nondairy milk, to add softness and lightness. I use almond milk, but you can certainly use any other non-dairy milk if you’d rather be nut-free. I use unbleached all purpose flour for these rolls. Sourdough keeps this bread healthy, by digesting complex starches before you put the bread in your tummy. But if you want to make them healthier, you can sub half the flour with whole wheat. Because we are making the rolls without any added yeast, the rise time for these rolls is on the higher side, about four hours for each of two rises. You can also do an overnight rise for the first rise, in the refrigerator. If you want your bread to rise faster, add some yeast to the recipe – one and a half teaspoons of active dry yeast should do the trick. If using yeast, mix it with the nondairy milk first and make sure it blooms. The proportion of nondairy milk in this recipe works perfectly for me, and I add in all the ingredients all at once to the bowl and then mix. But bread dough tends to behave differently in different climates. So if you’d rather, you can mix all the ingredients except the milk first and then drizzle in the milk until you get a smooth dough. You may need more milk if you’re working in an especially dry climate. You don’t need to knead this dough much – just enough to make it soft and smooth and pliable. You can do this in a stand mixer or by hand. This recipe makes 12 sourdough rolls. You can bake them in two round cake tins or in a rectangular 12 by 13 baking pan. These bread rolls need to cool in the pan for at least 20 minutes after baking, and you can then remove them from the pan and continue cooling them on a rack. It is not hard to get them out of a well-oiled pan, but you might need to help them with a spatula. Otherwise, sprinkle on some cornmeal on the baking pan before you place the rolls in it, which should make unmolding them a breeze.
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