Bread...

I love bread. I could give up sweet before I gave up bread. I would never survive on the Atkins diet. The smell of fresh baked bread is one of my favorite smells. I think Scentsy should come up with that for one of their new scents. Just an idea. I felt like baking today, and as soon as my husband saw me pulling ingredients out of the pantry he didn't say a word...just rolled his eyes. There seems to be a lot of eye rolling in this household. I am a big fan of http://www.thepioneerwoman.com/ and also http://www.tastykitchen.com/. I found these rolls on the site, and just had to make them for myself. I changed a few things, just because that is what I do, and they turned out so good. It makes a ton of them, so there will at least be a few left for dinner tonight. I even took some pictures of them! Now, if you have a Kitchenaid mixer, use it. I usually use my bread machine, but I hadn't tried out the dough hook yet, and this was the perfect opportunity.

Oh So Yummy Crescent Rolls

Ingredients:

1 Cup water

1/2 Cup + 1 tsp sugar

2 Sticks of butter (Use the fake stuff if you must, but the REAL butter is just so much better)

1 Package yeast

3 Eggs

5 Cups bread flour

1 tsp salt

Dissolve the packet of yeast and 1 tsp sugar in 1/2 cup of warm water. Let sit for 10 minutes, until nice and foamy. In a small saucepan, dissolve 1/2 cup sugar in 1/2 cup water. Take off heat and slice up a stick of butter and drop in, allowing the butter to melt. Let cool a little. Beat 3 eggs, and mix in the butter mixture. Add the yeast to this and mix. Add 4 1/2 cups of the bread flour. This is where my Kitchenaid came in very handy. Mix well, but the mixture will be very sticky! Scrape the dough into a bowl that has been buttered. Turn over once so the dough is buttered on both sides. Cover with a cloth and let rise until doubled in size (1 1/2 - 2 hours).

Soften the second stick of butter, and butter your hands! Place dough on a lightly floured surface (this is where you use the rest of the flour) and knead 10-15 times. Divide dough into thirds, and work with 1/3 at a time. Melt some butter and brush it on a cookie sheet. Take 1/3 of the dough and roll out into a 12 inch circle. Rub the stick of soft butter over the dough, coating lightly. Using a pizza cutter, slice the dough like you are slicing a pizza into 12 slices. I did slice one into 8 slices, and the rolls turned out HUGE! Start at the wide end and roll towards the point. Place on the cookie sheet point side down and shape into a crescent, imagine that! Continue until all the dough is used. I had to use two cookie sheets. Melt the remaining butter and brush over the tops of the rolls. Stick the cookie sheets in the oven and let rise until almost double in size. Don't turn the oven on for this part. I just let things rise in the oven so my chocolate lab doesn't eat the dough!

Bake at 350 for 17-20 minutes.

As I type this, my husband and kids are eating the rolls. I'm going to be very upset if they don't save me one or ten.