Bread roll recipe

I struggled with weight gain when I was in Australia last time and I think part of the reason was bread rolls. They are so easily available there, so big, and so delicious! In Japan it is hard to get bread rolls that are of a decent size (i.e. larger than the palm of your hand) and they aren't as tasty as Australian bread rolls.

So, I've taken to periodically making them. On Saturday we had leftover meat from three different meals, so I decided to make rolls to go with them. I forgot to take a photo of them, but they looked better than these I made earlier in the year. I discovered the trick to making them more burger-friendly. You put a tray on top of them in the oven so that they are flatter and wider!

I've been making it in the bread maker for many years now as we can't easily buy wholemeal bread here either. This year we've also discovered a way to make multigrain bread too! But as I said in this post about bread making back in March, I always feel so smug when I make bread totally by hand. It's a new skill for me in the last 12 months and living where we are, it's a nice one to have up my sleeve. 

Anyway, someone asked me for my bread roll recipe recently, so here it is. It's not hard, it just means you need to be around at the right times and need to plan ahead a few hours.

Ingredients
375ml water
2 tsp (7g) dried yeast
1 tsp sugar

600g plain flour (on Saturday I used about 450g bread flour and 150g wholemeal and it worked well)
2 tsp salt
60ml olive oil

Method
1. Combine the water, yeast, and sugar and set aside for five minutes or until foamy.
2. Combine flour and salt in a large bowl. Add oil and yeast mixture. Using your hands, mix until combined. 
3. Knead until smooth and elastic (the recipe says for 10 minutes, but I didn't do it that long).
4. Set aside in a warm place for an hour.
5. Repeat step 3. 
6. If you're in a hurry you can proceed to step 7, or if you have time repeat step 4.
7. Heat the oven to 200˚C.
7. Divide into equal portions of the size you desire (I made eight and they were a nice size for burgers). Put on an oven tray and brush with milk.
8. Bake for about 30 minutes or until golden.