Dinner rolls from pizza dough, anyone do it?
There's a restaurant in Chelsea, MI called The Common Grill, anyway they have the best dinner rolls I've ever tasted. They're chewey and have a relativly thin crust and are topped with poppy seeds and kosher salt as well as a herbed olive oil. I've been attempting to duplicate them for the past year or so, and I'm getting pretty close.
Last time I went there for dinner I interrogated a prep-cook prepping the rolls, and I noticed they were using a frozen dough prepared off-site which I would imagine is not uncommon for a restaurant. I asked her what kind of dough and she didn't know, but she did say they used a garlic/basil olive oil and brushed only before baking then baked with poppy & salt.
My current iteration is a 68% hydration pizza dough, brush with herb olive oil and poppy seeds + kosher salt before baking. My main problem is a pleasant crust texture. What i'm going for is a thin crust and a very moist chewy inside but not raw.
The last time I baked them I shaped them on a sheet pan and baked at 450F till done, I ended up taking them out too soon (I had read in a Reinhart book that rolls should be 190F in the center) and they weren't done, so i had to re-put them back in to finish baking which ended up kind of over-doing them.
So my question is does anyone else make rolls from their dough? I notice one pizza dough doesn't really go that far -- only about 6 rolls. And if so, what temperature is a good temp for rolls? I think the geometry doesn't work well with a pizza hot oven so I've gotta go lower, but I"m not real sure how low to go.
There is a flat bread that rolls are made from called pizza bread. It' s a local thing from Newark, NJ and is known around the state by Italian/Americans. It is used primarily for Italian style hot dogs and sausage but is also used for Italian sandwiches. There is really no recipe but I've made them at home because Italian Americans in the area grew up on this. Basically you take pizza dough, form it in a 9-10" round, about 3/4" thick. It normally has a hole like a big bagel. I bake mine in a 9" pie plate for about 20-30 mins with corn meal on the bottom. When cool, you cut it in half or quarters, hence a single or double sandwich. It looks like the large round breads (bagel)in the pic. It's really a sort of flat bread but cut up in halves or quarters to make a pocket like a pita. In NJ some bakeries make this bread, and sold in delis and some supermarkets. Nothing taste better then Italian style hot dogs or sausage and peppers on this. Try Italian cold cuts with roasted peppers. So Good!