As I am writing this, there’s a quarantine going on (see other post for how that’s not the correct term), and a friend who knows we bake almost all our own bread asked me for some easy recipes. Here’s my first one for her.  (Hi, Laura!!!!)
Guastelle are soft, fluffy, quick Italian rolls that are a great base for other ingredients AND a great base for food. Eat them plain, as sandwhich rolls, sliced and toasted for a bruscetta style base,  as hamburger buns, etc. I have rolled these into circles and stuffed with tuna salad and cheese or hot dogs or any meat we had to make for lunches.
The only drawback is that they stale fast. They freeze well, though, and they slice up and bake into zweibeck really well.

And here’s the entire recipe, so you don’t  have to go searching and dreading a huge story when all you want is to shove warm carbs into your mouth. 🙂

Now, the following pictures were done with All Purpose flour because most people don’t have bread flour. It was fantastic. I will make them with AP again and again because they were great with it.
Yes, that’s a lot of yeast, especially in this day and age. I buy my yeast in bulk (this is where I ought to insert an affiliate like to something, but I don’t have the time for that and I want you to get this fast) so using a lot isn’t a big deal.

I used a mixer for this, because Laura has a mixer with a sough hook and I wanted this simple. Of course, a wooden spoon and kneading works great as well.

dough hook and regular beater:

That’s 2 packs of yeast (which is a little under 2 T so I just know that in my note card) and 2 cups warm water dumped into a mixing bowl or the bowl of your mixer with 1/4 cup sugar. Bread baking note: all breads are 4 ingredients- yeast, salt, water and flour. (some skip the salt, but that’s rare). Other ingredients just change the bread. But all you need are those four. The sugar in this one makes it a little sweeter, gives the yeast something easy to eat to grow faster, and gives the crust a nice brown. The sugar will also make the crust burn faster, so these need to be watched, or you can scrape the bottoms off when they come out of the oven. It’s social distancing, who’ll see?

So dump the yeast, water, sugar, 2 eggs and 1/2 cup olive oil into the mixer.  Stir.

The oil is important. If you only have corn oil, use that. Any oil you have is fine. I have used 2 onions diced and browned in 1 stick of butter to make the best rolls ever before. Do not use high quality olive oil, though- save that for dipping. The eggs add a nice richness and color to this, but they can be omitted if you are vegan or are out of eggs. Or you can use one. They are not vital. Again, yeast, water, salt nad flour are the only vital parts to any bread.

Then add 3 cups of the flour and the T of salt. I used Kosher salt, because I have that on the counter. Use whatever salt you have. If you put it in the water mix first, it will slow the yeast growth down, so dump it onto the flour, and mix. With a cloth over it! That will prevent the flour from going everywhere. Shroud that mixer! Or look like a ghost!

After that, add the other flour. A lot of bakers will weigh their flour and add an exact amount. It’s basically because the more moisture in the flour, the heavier is it.  Humans have been baking bread long before scales were around, and you can too. You want the dough to be smooth and no stick to your hands.

For some reason, it sticks to Hex’s hands and not mine, I guess his are more dry?

After it’s mixed in, you want to switch to the dough hook/ knead on a table.

Add more flour if you need to to get it to a ‘puppy’s belly’ feel. let the machine knead it for just a minute or two- it doesn’t need a lot. By hand, when it stops sticking to everything and again, has that belly feel to it. It will ride up the collar of the hook, just push it down.

Then ‘make the rolls about half the size you want’. Hex was not happy with that instruction. I take an egg sized piece of dough and roll/pinch it until it’s a roll, dip the bottom in flour, and place on a sheet. I also pat it down, because these rolls rise up and not out.

These rise very quickly. The first ones will have already loosened up when you are putting the last ones on. I got two sheets.
Start of rising:

ready

in oven having baked for 8 minutes. At this point, I take them out, turn them 360 degrees, and switch the top and bottom ones. This gives them all a better heat distribution. Maybe a convection would be enough, but I dunno…

This was the 16 minute mark. Gorgeous!

4 of them on a plate when cool. Made 22 of them.

Froze half of the right off the bat. will be using them with soup tomorrow for dinner. Supposed to be 40 degrees.
Have fun!