Tuesday in the kitchen.

It is Tuesday and Tuesdays are for kitchen posts. I am going to cook or bake or both, and blog about it:)

Today I needed to bake crescent rolls, to go into the lunch boxes.
Usually I pack lunch boxes with mini pizzas from Trader Joe or grilled cheese sandwiches or hot dogs. Kateri gets dried fruit and some kind of dried veggie ( can you call a seaweed a veggie?). Zuzanna likes the regular fruit and a crunchy carrot. They are different, I know...

Every now and then I make my own crescent rolls. I got a recipe from here. I adjusted the directions and stuffed them with hot dogs. The good, grass fed beef, organic kind. Sometimes I put cheese in them.

And this is how I make them: 

First I melt 1/2 cup of butter and 1/2 cup of sugar in 11/2 cup of milk.
While the mixture is cooling down, in the big bowl or pot, I dissolve 2Tbl of yeast in 2 cups of warm water and leave it until the mixture bubbles.
Next I add 1 egg to the milk mixture and 1 TB of salt and 1 cup of unbleached, all purpose flour. I give a stir.
Then I dump the milk/sugar/butter into the yeast mixture. I give it a stir and add 1 cup of flour, and then another. All together up to 8 cups.
At this point I dump it on the counter top and knead by hand until smooth. I keep adding little amounts of flour. The dough needs up to 10 cups of flour.
When it looks all smooth, I put the dough back into the used pot.

 I cover it with a plastic wrap and wait about 2-3 hours for the dough to rise.
After the dough doubled or tripled...

...I place the dough onto the counter top and divide it into 4 balls.

I roll out one at the time, and spread 1 TB of butter. I cut the rolled dough into 4 pieces and then each piece into 3. I have 12 triangles ready to be stuffed! I place half a hot dog or piece of cheese or just leave it empty, and roll them up.

I repeat the process with every ball. At the end I have 48 crescent rolls.
Today I had 28 hot dog rolls and 20 empty. I can filled them up later with cheese or jam or other yummy spread.

I place the crescents onto the baking sheets and wait up to 30 minutes for them to rise again. To speed up the precess I heat the oven to 200F and place the baking sheets inside. Then I turn the oven off.

After the rolls get all plumped up I heat the oven at 350F and bake for 20 minutes or until they are golden brown.

When they are done, I hide them from everybody to cool them down:) Immediately after, I place them in big plastic bags and freeze them until they are ready to be packed for lunch.

Sometimes is hard to resist the smell and look of homemade, buttery, freshly baked crescent rolls:)

Kinga.