Orange Rolls: Dinner or Dessert Treat with Perfect Temperatures
Freshly made rolls are an essential part of all our favorite holiday feasts. But orange rolls? Those take it to another level altogether. You can ice them, for sure, making them more akin to cinnamon rolls—two of them a delight on a plate for brunch. Or you can leave them unfrosted and easily justify putting them with dinner. After all, you might have jam with plain rolls, yes? So why not a sweet, citrusy, delicious orange roll, rich with softened butter atop, sitting beside your chosen roast? Do it. Here we’ll show you how, including the critical temps you need for fluffy rolls that will not disappoint.
Get your temperature tools here:
Think of the children: getting your yeast to multiply appropriately
To make any leavened bread hat isn’t soda bread, you need yeast. And yeast is a living thing, it’s just usually dormant in the forms we buy it. In this recipe we use active dry yeast, which needs to be awakened and activated to start consuming sugars and producing carbon dioxide. Activating them properly without shocking them with cold or killing them with heat is a matter of temperature control.
To activate the yeast, mix it in a bowl with a little sugar and warm water. How warm is warm? 105–115°F (41–56°C) is the perfect temperature to get the yeast going right. Use your Thermapen ONE to make sure you’re not about to scald your yeasts. You’ll find that if your yeast is active, it may nearly run out of the bowl you mixed it in, if it’s too small! Be sure to wake them up right, because you need to get them feasting and multiplying before you start making your rolls.
Bread and dough basics review: rich dough finish temps
We have written on the topic of bread doneness before, but we never seem to tire of it! The amount and of arcane and entrenched lore that exists in the baking world explaining bread doneness is…well, there’s a lot of it. And a lot of it needs to be supplanted by factual, measurable means. We certainly won’t be removing one of these sticky rolls from their muffin tins and thumping them to see if they sound hollow.
We classify these rolls as a “rich-dough” bread, meaning they have fat and/or sugar in the dough. But they don’t have a lot of it, we we’re aiming for a doneness temperature that is a little higher than, say, a brioche would require. Rich breads usually have doneness temps in the range of 180–190°F (82–88°C), while lean-dough breads most often land in the 190–210°F (88–99°C) range. As we said, we’ll be going a bit high for a rich bread, so we’re looking for a doneness temp of 190–195°F (88—91°C).
Fermentation and proofing, going from dough to “oh!”
Dough is not interesting until it ferments, expands, rises. One could say that the proof of the bread lies in the proofing. We woke all those yeasts up and had them start multiplying for a reason, and that reason was to ferment the bread, create carbon dioxide, and make our bread rise. As with almost all breads, that process consists of two parts here.
First there is the bulk ferment. This stage gets the yeast going and start the work of leavening on a large scale. You ferment the whole lump of dough until it roughly doubles in size. To optimize that fermentation, try to keep the dough at 85°F (29°C), the temperature at which activated yeast performs with greatest efficiency.
Then, once the dough has risen in its bulk ferment, you fill and shape the rolls and. let them rise again. This round of fermentation, rising the dough into its final shape, is called “proofing” and is also best performed at 85°F (29°C). If you don’t proof your rolls, they will be dense, not light and fluffy. See the slider below for pictures of the rolls before and after proofing:
You can see how much better the properly proofed rolls are going to cook up than the un-proofed ones would.
With holiday gatherings, dinner parties, and various family events coming up around the corner (this is being written in December…), you could use a good roll recipe, and this one is fantastic. Give it a try, use your Thermapen ONE to check those temps, including the doneness temp, and we think you’ll make another batch within a week. Here’s hoping! Happy cooking.
Homemade Orange Rolls Recipe
Ingredients
For the filling
- 1 C 1 stick unsalted butter, softened
- 1 C sugar
- 2 Tbsp finely grated orange zest
- ¼ tsp kosher salt
For the dough
- 2 Tbsp active dry yeast
- 4 Tbsp sugar divided
- 2 egg yolks lightly beaten, room temperature
- ⅔ C fresh orange juice
- 4 Tbsp melted butter cooled
- 1 tsp kosher salt
- 3 ⅓ C cups all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting your surface plus more for surface
Instructions
- First, make the filling by combining all the filling ingredients in the bowl of a stand mixer and beating it at increasing speed until it is soft, pliable, and easily spreadable. Scrape into a bowl and set aside.
- Start activating the yeast by combining 2 Tbsp of the sugar with 6 Tbsp (3 oz) of water that you temped with your Thermapen ONE to be 105–115°F (41–46°C) and stirring the yeast in. Let sit until the yeast awakens and start to become foamy ~10 min.
- In the stand mixer, beat together the orange juice, egg yolks, melted butter, remaining sugar, and salt.
- Add the flour and the foamy yeast mixture, change out the beater for a dough hook, and knead the dough together until the dough is supple and smooth. The dough will be somewhat sticky.
- Lightly oil or non-stick spray a bowl, put the dough in it, cover, and let it proof, preferably in and 85°F (29°C) environment until doubled in size, about 45 minutes.
- Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and roll it into a rectangle about 34×14", until about ⅛" thick.
- Use a spatula to spread the filling all over the dough, leaving about 2" on the far, long side uncoated.
- Roll the dough up, cinnamon-roll style, along its long edge. Cut the roll in half, then each of those in half, then each of those in half, then each of those in thirds.
- Transfer the rolls to prepared muffin tins (or one large prepared muffin tin like we used.) Cover loosely with oiled plastic wrap.
- Proof for another 30 minutes or so, until the rolls are poofy and look. Meanwhile, preheat your oven to 350°F (177°C).
- Bake the rolls, checking the temperature for about 15 minutes (use a timer to know when to check the doneness). When the rolls reach 190–195°F (88–91°C). Check the temp with your Thermapen ONE.
- Let the rolls cool for 5 minutes, then turn them out and serve them warm.