Ricotta Rolls リコッタチーズ入りディナーロール

While my wife was looking through “The Silver Palate Good Times Cookbook”, she came across a recipe for “Ricotta Pepper Bread”. She thought using ricotta cheese in bread was a bit unusual and decided to make this bread. She made some changes, as usual, including making it into rolls instead of a loaf, using buttermilk instead of regular milk and cayenne pepper instead of black pepper. The result was quite good dinner rolls. They have a nice soft texture but not too soft, a very fine crumb and a nice flavor. Although she put in a good amount of cayenne pepper, it did not come through much.

Ingredients:

4 to 4½ cups unbleached all-purpose flour
2 packages active dry yeast
2 tsp salt
1 tbs. sugar
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper (Maybe 1/2 tsp next time since the pepper taste didn’t come through with 1/4 tsp.)
½ cup milk, (she used buttermilk)
6 tbs. (¾ stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
2 cups ricotta cheese
2 eggs

Directions:
Combine 3 cups of the flour with the yeast, salt, sugar and pepper in the bowl of a stand mixer. Slowly add the milk with the mixer running. Then add the ricotta cheese and eggs. As a dough starts to form add pieces of the butter so they get incorporated into the dough. Slowly add additional flour as needed to make a smooth soft dough. Knead for 7 to 10 minutes. 

Place the dough in a buttered large bowl and turn to coat with butter. Cover the bowl with a damp towel and let rise in a warm spot until doubled in bulk, 1 to 1½ hours. Punch the dough down and let it rise again for about 1 hour. Butter a large pyrex baking dish . Punch the dough down, shape it into small buns (2 1/2 oz) and place in the baking dish. Cover and let rise until double in size, (about 45 minutes). Preheat oven to 350°F. Bake 15 to 25 minutes until the loaf is nicely browned. Turn out onto a wire rack to cool completely.