I tried to make sourdough rolls for quite some time now. I got some decent results, but never to a point where the effort would be justified. This recipe however is nearly as simple and easy as baking bread.

Ingredients

For the first try of this technique I used the dough of my poppy sunflower seed bread recipe though you can basically use any other bread variant on this blog, though reduce the water a bit in comparison to what you would use when baking a bread loaf instead of rolls (maybe reduce it by 2-3%), just to be on the safe side.

Instructions

Start by following any other bread recipe, though maybe reduce the water by a bit (ca. 2-3%). Mix the ingredients and let the dough rest for about 4h at room temperature. Afterward shape the bread into a round loaf, place it in a proofing basked and let it rest in the fridge for 6-10h. At my first try I let it rest for 3h, though the dough did not rise quite enough and some defects formed at the rolls during baking. Not a biggy, though could have been avoided. In theory you can also go for a 2h fermentation at room temperature, though I found that cold dough handles better when splitting it.

Preheat the Dutch oven. In the meanwhile prepare a kitchen towel and the seeds you want for a crust. Spread them evenly. Once the oven is on temperature place the loaf on the seeds. They will stick to the bottom a bit which is what you want for the nexst step. Place the loaf on a kitchen surface and cut it into 6 pieces. Spray them with water and roll them in the seeds one by one. Place them on a baking tray until all are done.

Now get the preheated Dutch oven out and place all roles inside. Note: place them on the outside. They will rise and you do not want them to touch each other. Touching the outside however does not really matter as the dough will not stick to it.

Bake them for 20 minutes covered at 250 degrees. Other than bread, bake them for 7 minutes open, also on 250 degrees. I personally open the Dutch oven but keep both parts in the oven during the second stage. This way the Dutch oven is still fully preheated for the next round of rolls or the next loaf of bread (which it is not during normal bread baking as I usually reduce the heat to 220-230 during open baking).

Tips

• Once all are rolled you can collect the seeds by folding and lifting the kitchen towel to pour them right next to the jar you want to store them in ;) As rolls will loose quite a bit of their seeds during cutting or storage I also add those seeds to the jar and use its content for the next random seed bread.