A new tradition

This year for Thanksgiving, I offered to bring two things: the cranberry sauce and the rolls. This is a big step up from what I normally bring, which is nothing. This is also sort of a big deal because I had never eaten, let alone made, cranberry sauce up until a couple weeks ago. So I thought it'd be best if I did a trial run, which I did. And it turned out great! We all ate it on vanilla ice cream and loved it.

So I felt pretty good about bringing that to Thanksgiving. But then I think I got overconfident about my cooking abilities because my next thought was, "cranberry sauce doesn't seem like enough. I should make something else." So I got this crazy idea to make homemade rolls. I thought it would be fun to get up early on Thanksgiving and knead the dough, let it rise, knead it some more, let it rise more, and so on. It seemed very old fashioned and festive.

I found this great recipe that I had never used before, but which looked delicious. I was a little concerned that the recipe was four pages long, and in paragraph form, not bullet points. But I figured I could follow it easily enough if I just read along and stayed focused. I started out strong:

But after that, the directions got incredibly complicated. I think it read something like this:

"Roll out dough to exactly half an inch. Cut into circles, using a geometry compass for precision. Find the center, using a protractor, and poke with two inch needle. Spin around in a circle three times. Fold 1/8 of circle of dough over, then turn 1/6 into center and press down. Unfold, brush melted butter on circle. Turn 1/3 of circle upwards and flip whole thing over. Let rise for awhile, until rolls look super yummy. Then unfold and follow the whole process again, but backwards while singing your favorite song from Fiddler on the Roof. This is important. Place triangle shaped rolls on baking sheet at an angle."

My head was spinning by the time I put them in the oven. Not one of the rolls was the same size, or anywhere near it. Once baked, they were actually quite good, as long as aesthetics don't matter to you. I think I'm going to have to find a different recipe for Thanksgiving.