Pumpkin Rolls
When the cold weather snaps, it’s time to bake! A couple weeks ago, I wanted to bake something fall-ish, and had seen these on Pinterest, so I decided to give them a try myself. Essentially, they’re just dinner rolls, tied up and baked. They look complicated, but are really very simple! If you can wrap a package, you can wrap a roll.
For the bread, I used this Molly Yeh’s challah recipe (minus the garlic and onion), which is one of my faves. You could probably just buy pre-made bread dough from the store if you don’t feel like making it from scratch. Once the dough was done proofing, I divided it into 8 equal pieces and rolled them into balls.
Using a natural colored kitchen twine with a foot or two of slack on the end, wrap the twine across the top of the roll in an East/West direction, and criss-crossed it underneath, bringing it back up at a North/South direction, so you end up with a cross, or X on the top. Repeat this step on each diagonal, so you split each quarter of the circle into two. This is a bit hard to explain using words, so take a look at the photos below. You’re just wrapping until you get the lines to look like the indentations on a pumpkin.
Pull the twine taught, but not too tight, so you can still get it out after it’s baked. The bread will expand through the twine in the oven.
Once you’ve got your roll wrapped, tie the twine in a knot. Brush the rolls with a honey egg wash (an egg beaten with a tiny bit of water and about a Tbsp. of honey). As you’ll notice in the photo below, I tried coloring my egg wash with green and orange food coloring to dye my pumpkins slightly, but it really didn’t work, so I wouldn’t recommend that. Haha.
Bake on a silicone mat or parchment paper lined sheet pan, according the directions for your bread.*
*My recipe was for a loaf, so since I broke the dough up into smaller rolls instead, I cut the bake time by 5 min or so.
Allow the rolls to cool completely, or until cool enough to handle. Carefully cut the twine using scissors and pull it out of the roll, taking care not to tear the bread.
For a little something extra, you can poke a bamboo cocktail pick through the top to look like a stem! I’m going to thread a name tag on each roll for Thanksgiving and use them as place cards. I think our guests will really enjoy them!
