Thyme | Pull Apart Rolls

This has been blowing up on my old food blog (4 whole people liked it), East Meets West Tennessee, so I thought I’d share it here! Brought to you by Thanksgiving 2014…dare to remember here!

Thyme Pull Apart Rolls

Why is making bread so satisfying? It’s like I look at it and can’t believe I made that. It’s amazing. This was a winner for my Thanksgiving Day table but the great thing is I only made half of them and stored the other half in the freezer. I sometimes just open it up and stare longingly at the log of frozen dough and dream about the day that I pull them out, defrost them, bake them and eat them all by myself. It will be a good day. A good day.

Adapted from: MyRecipes.com

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups warm whole milk
1 package (2 1/4 tsp.) active dry yeast
2 tsp sugar
2 tsp salt
3 tbs chopped chives
1/2 tbs dried thyme
3 large eggs, at room temperature
7 tablespoons butter, melted and cooled, divided
About 5 1/4 cups flour
1 teaspoon coarse sea salt

Directions:

In the large bowl combine milk, yeast, and sugar. Let stand until yeast softens, 5 to 7 minutes. Add table salt, chives, thyme, 2 eggs, and 1/3 cup butter and mix on low speed with dough hook until blended. (I used a hand held mixer.)
Gently blend in 5 cups flour. Mix on medium until dough is smooth, stretchy, and pulling away from inside of bowl, 10 minutes. Add just enough flour so dough is only slightly tacky. Cover and let rise in a warm place until doubled, about 1 1/4 hours.
Grease muffin cups with butter. Punch down dough. On a large, lightly floured work surface, roll out dough to a rectangle. Brush with 1 tbsp. butter.
Cut dough into 6 long strips, each 1 1/2 in. wide. Stack strips, then cut stack in half crosswise. With a serrated knife, gently cut each stack into 10 portions starting by halving it and then continuing to halve each side. Arrange each with a set of edges up in a muffin cup so you see all the layers.
Let rise at room temperature, loosely covered, until puffy, 30-45 minutes.
Preheat oven to 350°. Beat remaining egg, then gently brush over tops and sides of rolls. Sprinkle with sea salt.
Bake rolls until golden, 20 to 25 minutes.
Let cool in pans on a rack 5 minutes, then gently lift out to racks and serve warm or cool.
I baked then froze for a week prior to Thanksgiving. On the day I defrosted them and warmed them in the oven.