i love sundays...

i really really love sundays.  it's the only day of the week where i have the house to myself (well, the animals don't count) so i can do what i want when i want.  i always start the day out by drinking my coffee while reading my book while listening to casey kasem's top 40 from the 70's. NICE!

this weekend i had a shitload of stuff to do.  i needed to finish the 5 bags for my friend noelle, make christmas cards, put together the christmas package for alistair to mail to his family in the UK, get what presents i have wrapped and make food.  sundays are usually the day that i make food.  

this sunday i made water proofed rolls from james beard and some bitchin' cheesy cauliflower soup from my soup cookbook.

i was looking through beard on bread looking for an easy roll to make when i came across the water proofed buns.  i had never even heard of water proofing bread before so i immediately called my mom to see if she had ever done this.  she whipped out her beard on bread book and nope, she'd never heard of it either.

so basically, in place of letting your dough rise in a warm place for the first rising, you put it in tepid water. 

here's the dough before i put in the water:

then i wrapped it with string (loosely) and put it in the water.

at first it sinks to the bottom.

but after 30-40 minutes, it's floating on top and had really almost doubled in size:

the string is much tighter now.  i'm not sure you can really tell from the picture.

while the bread was doing all of this, i was doing all of this:

working on christmas cards while watching tv.

i was kinda dumb and didn't take a shot of the dough after i opened it up (duh!), but i just cut it into sections and made buns:

this kind of bun was supposed to be rolled out into a long thin roll and made into an 8 and then dipped in sugar and cooked.  but i didn't want a sweet roll with my cheezy cauliflower soup, i wanted a dipping bun, so i just made them round.  

then they needed to proof again for another 30-40 minutes:

they got quite flat and round, but i thought that was totally ok.  this dough was super soft and kind of sloppy, so i'm totally not surprised this is how they came out.  they would have looked good as 8's.

and the finished product!!

they were a great bun for dipping into a creamy cheesy soup.  i didn't take a shot of the soup because it really just looked like a bowl of milk.  you couldn't tell it was soup unless you were eating it, but it was delicious!!

we ate a couple of the buns and i froze the rest because the book said that they froze well.  so the next time i have soup, i already have buns!

i love sundays.  i'm really looking forward to next sunday, because hopefully i'm going to ivy's to see her BABY!!!!!!!!!  and her, i'm excited to see her too!