Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Another vote for parchment paper . . .

A favorite bread roll in our family is a crusty cheese one. I don't make them very often because the cheese often turns into burned tar before the bread is finished baking. Then, I have the baking pan to soak . . . and soak . . . and soak in hopes of eventually getting it clean. Since the arrival of parchment paper in my kitchen, it has reduced a lot of these problems. Up until yesterday, however, I still hesitated to make cheese bread rolls. I finally straightened my spine and entered the kitchen prepared to try this favorite recipe with parchment paper and see what would exit the oven at the end of the baking period.

I lined the bottom and the sides of my favorite, heavy 13x11-inch baking pan with parchment paper. No vegetable oil spray or butter, just the paper. I formed my bread dough into serving rolls, dipped them in a mixture of olive oil and butter and rolled them in a combination of grated cheddar and Romano cheese. Once the pan was filled, I scattered the remaining cheese over the top . . . and baked them.

The parchment paper worked perfectly! The rolls were tender on the inside, the top had a bubbly crusty cheese finish and the bottom of the rolls has a crispy layer of baked cheese. Since bread needs to be removed from the pan as soon as possible to avoid the baked goods from 'sweating' and gettin soggy, it was super simple to just lift all the rolls out by the overhang of the parchment paper. I set the whole thing on a cooling rack and got rave reviews from my family at dinner. And. the pan just needed a soapy wash and rinse.

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