17-8: Tasty Dinner Rolls

17-8: Tasty Dinner Rolls

So, it’s probably weird to write about what you made for Thanksgiving when it’s March. It’s probably even weirder to write about what you made for Thanksgiving 2022 in March 2024. But, here we are, and here’s 17-8: Tasty Dinner Rolls. Which I made for Thanksgiving…in 2022 (TGV 2022).

It’s taking me a minute to catch up on some of these, what can I say.

There’s not much more to say about rolls than what they said above. Trust me, I wrote this a few times and then realized each version was essentially a rehash of what they already wrote. Since I’m not trying to hit a word count for a school report here, let’s move on.


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16-26: Elegant Almond Cake

16-26: Elegant Almond Cake

A few months ago, I made two Simply Delicious almond cakes for work: this one, 16-26: Elegant Almond Cake and 16-33: Crispy Almond Cake. I think this one came out prettier, but they were both delicious.

Simply Delicious doesn’t mention this in their blurb, but it’s also great for accompanying coffee or tea on a Wednesday morning at the office. They also refer to this dish as a cake, but it’s very clearly a tart. To confirm, here’s a recipe from King Arthur Flour that is essentially this exact same dish (referred to a tart) but with raspberries instead of Maraschino cherries.


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17-30: Stollen

17-30: Stollen

Still catching up on a few old ones–but maybe you can file this one away for later on this year. 17-30: Stollen is a traditional German sweet fruit bread that is typically eaten around Christmas time. After two back-to-back years of holiday treat bundles comprised of multiple Simply Delicious creations (good way to burn them off quickly), I’ve pretty much finished off that type of recipe…at least when it comes to baked goods.

Stollen isn’t a Simply Delicious creation–Wikipedia has a pretty extensive entry on it. There’s some other pretty solid recipes out there as well, if you’d like to compare them to this one. I find comparing multiple versions (from trustworthy/reputable sources) of a well-known dish helps me understand what’s essential about it (what I find common amongst all the recipes) and what’s up for interpretation (where they differ). 🇩🇪🎄


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17-2: English Rusks

17-2: English Rusks

This project is coming up on 4 years old, and I’m a handful of recipes away from finishing the Baked Goods chapter–at least, according to the collection that I have. There’s definitely some out there that I don’t have the card for, but here’s one of the last uncovered few (#50!) that I do have: 17-2: English Rusks. 🇬🇧☕

According to Wikipedia, English rusks are hard, dry biscuits given to babies for teething or crumbled up and used as filler for ground meat. It’s actually the US version of rusks that are more familiar–they list Melba toast and biscotti as examples.


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17-34: Honey White Bread

17-34: Honey White Bread

Here’s yet another white bread recipe for you–Simply Delicious has already covered this territory pretty well with 17-6: Best Ever White Bread and 17-10: Poppy Seed Bread17-6: Honey White Bread is probably more comparable to traditional white store-bought bread (think Wonder Bread) than the other entries thanks to the sweetness added by the honey.🍯

I’d consider this more of a “breakfast” bread than a sandwich bread, but YMMV.


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17-16: Whole Wheat Baguette

17-16: Whole Wheat Baguette

Here’s a simple whole wheat bread recipe. 17-16: Whole Wheat Baguette has “baguette” in the name, but you could use this same recipe to make buns, rolls, sandwich bread, or any other shape you prefer. This is more of a utilitarian recipe more than anything else–nothing fancy here.

Baguettes are indeed long, thin loaves of French bread (French bread being a type of dough, not a type of shape). I made short, thin individual loaves instead, which the Wikipedia article I linked to calls demi-baguettes, although mine are probably even shorter than that. I thought individually-sized ones might be an interesting experiment instead of one or two long loaves.


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9-16: Individual Salami Pizzas

9-16: Individual Salami Pizzas

Simply Delicious has several takes on pizza–we’ve covered quite a few already including 13-11: Vegetarian Pizza, 1-9: Four Seasons Pizza, and 5-31: Oven Pizza Pancake. There’s even 11-4: Calzone with Seafood if you like your pizza folded in half with toppings on the inside. 9-16: Individual Salami Pizzas is probably one of the more “traditional” pizza recipes so far.

It’s recommended to make this for something like a kid’s party, since it’s pretty tough to find a kid who will say no to pizza. I was a teacher for several years, ran a meal program for a school for a year or two, and I’m here to tell you that pizza (in whatever shape/form/capacity) was always a crowd pleaser for young and old.


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17-22: Bread Loaves with Creamy Filling

17-22: Bread Loaves with Creamy Filling

One of the last few from the “in-the-queue-way-too-long” batch, here’s 17-22: Bread Loaves with Creamy Filling. I’ve been putting this recipe off for a while–I never seemed to have or remembered to buy cottage cheese to make it. Yes, in another 1980s-lowfat-health-craze-inspired moment, Simply Delicious chooses to sacrifice flavor for “health benefits”, this time by stuffing whole wheat bread with herb-flavored cottage cheese.

See? “Healthy” is right there in the description. Now, 30+ years later, we’ve determined that fats are probably better for you than we thought back then, and carbs/sugar are probably a lot worse for you. Remember, when they make things “low-fat”, they usually have to jack up the sugar to make it somewhat edible. Not really a great strategy for weight loss, as my parents’ yo-yo dieting throughout the 80s, 90s, and beyond can attest to.


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17-10: Poppy Seed Bread

17-10: Poppy Seed Bread

One of the last entries from the Baked Goods chapter, 17-10: Poppy Seed Bread is essentially white bread with a sprinkling of poppy seeds on top. Simply Delicious shows it as a loaf, but I chose to make it into rolls/buns–since you’re already topping the bread with seeds, it makes it very reminiscent of sesame seed hamburger buns. 🍔

Even 20+ years later, most mentions of poppy seeds inevitably end up referencing this Seinfeld gag, where Elaine’s love for poppy seed muffins keep causing her to test positive for opium on a work-administered drug test.

This often leads to the question: Can poppy seeds really affect a drug test? And the answer, according to the New York Times, is actually “Yes!” 🤔 You’d have to eat a LOT of them (much more than what the recipe for this bread contains) to have it show up at levels that would cause alarm–but the claim does actually have merit.


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18-2: Basic Yeast Dough II

18-2: Basic Yeast Dough II

Happy New Year! 🍾 We’ll start off this year (as I have other years) by finishing up a bit of old business from last year. I had started a Bread Series at the end of 2017, covering the first part of this Cooking School set (18-1: Basic Yeast Dough I) as well as including 20-12: Basic Rolls as a good base recipe to practice with.

Here, we’ll cover 18-2: Basic Yeast Dough II, which includes the fundamentals of the process of bread-making, as well as some tips on how to tell where your bread may have gone wrong. I’ve been making bread for a while, and I still run into trouble–it’s nice to know what I might have messed up so that I can try to fix it for the future.

Bread making is not a quick process–sometimes you can be working on a bread for 24-48 hours between the blooming, kneading, rising, and proofing. When I was being trained to make bread in the restaurant I worked in a few years ago, we would start making bread at 8 AM, and barely be finished by dinner time around 5-6 PM.

That’s not including our starter which had to be fed every day, as well as making all of the other baked goods that our pastry chef made daily. It can be a LOT of work!


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