Whole Wheat Rolls

Thought I’d share this whole wheat roll recipe:

First make a sponge:

1 cup warm water (~110F)

1 cup whole wheat flour

1.5 tsp. yeast

Whisk together and let sit for 15-20 minutes or until bubbly. (If it never gets bubbly, your yeast is dead. I keep mine in the fridge and it has lasted years!)

To the sponge add:

1.25 cups of whole wheat flour

40 grams melted vegan margarine (I used Miyoko’s oatmilk butter) OR 31 grams neutral oil

1/2 tsp. salt

60 grams of vegan honey (I used Simple Truth’s Vegan Honee) or if you eat honey, use that. Optionally, you can use any kind of sugar. Just look up conversion rates. For example, honey is sweeter than table sugar.

I used a KitchenAid stand mixer with a dough hook and let it go for 11 minutes on the lowest speed. Whole wheat needs more kneading regardless for the gluten to activate and to give you springy/fluffy bread. So if you knead by hand, just knead it until the gluten is springy and it rolls into a smooth ball. Cover and let rise until around double, anywhere from an hour to two and half hours.

Divide into the size you want (I recommend 10 if doing rolls), shape like you want, and let rise for an additional 45 minutes to an hour. Since mine were these braid/knot things, I put them on a cookie sheet on a silpat. But you could also put them in a lightly greased casserole dish for pull-apart rolls. In the meantime preheat oven to 350F.

I brushed mine with equal parts unflavored/unsweetened soymilk and maple syrup (I used a tablespoon of each and have way more leftover than I used…oops! I think a teaspoon of each would be plenty.) and sprinkled on raw sesame seeds. I baked mine for 18 minutes. Bread is done when the middle reaches 190-200F. I imagine casserole dish style might take a few minutes longer. Since it’s got sugar in it, I don’t recommend baking higher than 350F. If you wanted to do a braided loaf, that takes about 25 minutes in my experience.

The dough ball weighed about 680 grams when done so I divided it into 10. These rolls are very large. According to my math, they have 150 calories each, and 4 grams of protein. I really am surprised how big they are! I was going to divvy them into 8s but when I was logging my food, I needed to do some shaving here and there so decided to divide them into 10. I thought I’d be left with small rolls, but nope, they are ample!

This is the recipe I used by the way: https://youtu.be/_l0yOy29n_o Only difference was using vegan butter instead of oil and vegan honey and making a smaller (about a third the size)batch.