I cheated on Thanksgiving and bought Bridgeford frozen bread dough rolls. I love homemade rolls for a special meal but it seems like the kitchen is covered in flour along with the rest of the mess when you sit down to eat and it bugs me. The frozen ones just sat on the counter all day and turned out pretty good in the end. This got me to thinking that I could make my own dough ahead of time and freeze it and do the same thing without the mess. But why stop there? I would make the rolls I grew up on for special meals: French’s Bakery in Costa Mesa across the street from Fast Foto (my first job btw) had these delicious onion, cheese poppyseed rolls. The dough was light and sweet but also savory. I wanted to recreate these so I took the dough recipe for my orange rolls and filled it like cinnamon rolls but with caramelized onions, cheddar cheese and poppyseeds on dough that was spread with melted butter! They were amazing! I wish I had some still frozen in my freezer. We ate them up for Christmas dinner and used the leftover for little sandwich buns.
This is the recipe for the dough.
Ingredients:
2 packages of yeast
1/2 cup melted butter
1 1/4 cup warm water
1 tsp salt
3 eggs
1/2 cup sugar
4 1/2 cups flour
Caramelized onion: one large onion thinly sliced and cooked slowly in olive oil and some salt for about 10 minutes until caramelized.
Cheddar cheese
Poppyseeds
Soften the yeast in the warm water. Add the butter, salt and sugar. Add the eggs, then add the flour slowly until it forms a very soft dough. Cover with a towel and rise on the counter for 1 1/2 hours. Punch it down, cover with Saran Wrap and refrigerate overnight. In the morning, take the dough out of the bowl, cut in half and roll one piece out into a rectangle. Spread with melted butter, spread 1/4 of the caramelized onions, 1/4 of the cheddar cheese and a sprinkle of poppyseeds on half of the rectangle. Fold other half over the top of filling and layer with more onions, cheese and poppyseeds. Fold in half again, sprinkle with poppyseeds and cut into 1 inch thick pieces and place on a cookie sheet and freeze. Once frozen but in a ziplock bag to store for later when you are ready. I took these out Christmas Eve morning and set on the counter for around 4 hours maybe more. I baked them for 6 to 8 minutes at 400 degrees. Delish! Just like French’s Bakery.
