17-5: Hot Seedy Rolls

We’ve finally reached the big day: 17-5: Hot Seedy Rolls were the fifth dish I cooked for my big Thanksgiving feast (TGV 2016), and in true baker fashion, I started them before the sun rose on Thanksgiving Thursday. These served as my rolls for my dinner–I served them with a tomato butter and a roasted garlic & herb butter.

I wanted something a bit healthier to balance out the sugar in the cranberries and in the desserts (two of which were 15-49: Chocolate Pudding Deluxe and 16-52: Apple Nut Saucepan Torte). These were definitely seedy, but I think it worked well for a harvest-themed dinner such as Thanksgiving.

Other dishes I made the day of Thanksgiving (Thur. 11/24): 1-5: Pigs in a Blanket, a crudité platter, 6-29: Stuffed Turkey, along with assembling & heating all the other dishes.


Whole wheat kernels were an interesting search–I found them in the bulk bins at a local grocery store, but this is California so I don’t know if that’s applicable everywhere.


Ingredients. I skipped on low-fat milk (whole is fine), but everything else is here. Kernels need to soak for a few hours in advance of making the bread (reading recipes in advance is important), so make sure you account for that.


The prep list as of 6:00 AM, Thursday morning.


Woke up, made coffee, started soaking kernels. The rest of the house was still asleep.


Placed the bowl in the window above the sink to keep it out of the way. Outside lights are still on, and the sun’s barely peeking up. My centerpiece flowers have perked up a bit though.


Made 1-5: Pigs in a Blanket while I waited for everyone to wake up and for the kernels to finish soaking. These two were the last sleepy holdouts.


It’s about 9:00 AM now, and 1-5: Pigs in a Blanket are out of the oven. Time to get these rolls going before 6-29: Stuffed Turkey needs to get in there (about 12:00 PM). ⏱


Drained the kernels in a fine-mesh strainer.


Oily, milky, & yeasty.


Whole wheat flour mixed with all-purpose flour–these rolls are about half and half.


I can’t remember if this is from before or after it rose–it didn’t grow much in size. I’m not sure if that was on me or the recipe, but I’ll bet on the former.


Either way, they still rolled out okay. It’s been a while since I’ve rolled buns–my arm & wrist were killing me.


I used to do over 100 of these a day–I barely made it through 20 now.


20 rolls later, they’re almost ready for the oven. I was multi-tasking turkey prep with making these rolls–oven space & time were at a premium.


I forgot to crush the kernels, but it seemed to work out anyway.


After baking. They got a bit more oven spring than I would have liked (see the back corner ones for examples of that), but they tasted and looked okay enough for a casual Thanksgiving dinner.


You can see a roll or two poking out of their basket in the foreground of the picture, along with the herb and tomato butters that I served them with. There’s also mashed potatoes, stuffing, cranberries, gravy, and 6-29: Stuffed Turkey, waiting for 4-27: Mushroom-Parsnip Au Gratin to come out of the broiler. One more snapshot from our Thanksgiving meal.

The rolls themselves were not bad, but don’t expect to eat more than 1 in a sitting–they’re pretty dense.

Grade: A-


Interested in the full list of Simply Delicious dishes I made for 2016’s Thanksgiving feast?