Pumpkin soup and soft butter rolls

I had a bit of a migraine today, so I had spent some of the afternoon in bed. It had gone when I woke up at 4pm, but I didn't feel like doing anything too fiddly for dinner, so I decided to make a soup. I had a gigantic butternut pumpkin, so pumpkin soup it was!

I usually make the famous Lailah's 900g jumbo loaf recipe into bread rolls, but it occurred to me that I hadn't yet made any breads from the Basic Cook Book for the blog! So I thought I would try out the soft butter rolls.

I had a funny feeling with this recipe, with the quantity of flour it requires. It seemed like an awful lot of flour to not that much liquid. I did add in some bread improver, as I find that it tends to make bread softer and also makes it last longer. Just 2 teaspoons though, so this wouldn't have made any difference to the end texture. Once all the ingredients were added, I did the initial mix to combine it. It didn't really combine much at all, so I gave it another quick mix around with my spatula. I then started the kneading. I looked through the lid and nothing was moving even though the blades were going. So I took the lid off and loosened it up a bit then tried again. Nothing much happening. Loosened it again and then when I tried to knead it made a funny squealing noise and sounded like the blades were stuck. I ended up tipping the whole lot onto the pastry mat, discovering that it had formed a solid pile of dough on the bottom. I broke it all up and tried again. It got to the end of the 2 minute knead and wasn't brought together at all. It was a big dry mess! I kneaded it as best as I could and put it in a metal bowl, covered in wrap and then in the warmed oven to prove (I prove on the keep warm setting on my oven, which is what I usually do with bread dough).

After one hour I checked it. It hadn't risen very much at all, but the texture of it was a little better. It wasn't as stretchy as my usual bread dough though. I had serious doubts about the end product, but perservered with it! I rolled them into 80g balls and put them into a high sided baking tray, then left them to rise again for 15 minutes while I started on the soup.

I love making this pumpkin soup! I like putting the raw pumpkin and carrot in and obliterating it in seconds! It really shows the power the thermomix has. This also helps the soup to cook a lot faster. I hadn't opened my carton of cream yet, but I had some creme fraiche left over from the chicken veloute meal, so I used that instead of adding cream to the soup. The finished product is so silky and smooth. I found it was already seasoned well enough with salt from the vegetable stock that is in it, so I just ground some pepper over it. Yum!

Obliterated raw pumpkin and carrot in 15 seconds!

The rolls...they don't look the best. They definitely didn't turn out much like the picture in the book. They were quite heavy and doughy, almost as if they hadn't proved enough. They tasted more like damper than anything. And they definitely weren't soft. The texture of the bread was uneven and dry. I wasn't a big fan of these at all, and don't think I will make them again unfortunately. Still, this far through the book, and its really the first fail I have had. Onwards and upwards!

Soft butter rolls

Happy thermomixing!