Milk Line Rolls - Part 7

Handwritten quote in red and brown that reads, “Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well. It is the certainty that something is worth doing no matter how it turns out.” - Václav Havel, writing and photo by Andrea Sexton Dumas

I read somewhere that you can sub pineapple juice for the milk and the rolls will taste like King’s Hawaiian Bread. It would be much easier to just buy the King’s Hawaiian Bread, but there’s something in the process of making rolls that fills me. The kneading, the rising and waiting. It’s alchemical for both the dough and me; I need to knead.

It turns out that I don’t have pineapple juice or milk, so I make them with water for the first time. While kneading, I can tell the dough doesn’t feel right, but I’m not sure what’s wrong. I knead for 20 minutes then let them rise. 

Or not.  After an hour, the dough hadn’t moved. The yeast was dead.  

Wondering what happened, I started over. There was that wise inner voice in my ear, “You can do your absolutely best, but sometimes things just don’t work out the way you planned.”  

Nearly two years into the pandemic, this resonated deeply. I began to cry. Sometimes things just don’t work out. Yeast dies. Loved ones die. Plans don’t work out, despite your deepest desires or best intentions. 

Oh, the timing. 

Knead, rise, punch it down, form, rise.

“Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well,” Václav Havel tells us. “It is the certainty that something is worth doing no matter how it turns out.”

The second batch made with water instead of milk turned out really well. They’ve even got that soft piece of dough where two rolls meet. That’s the texture I had been trying to recreate.

Later, I dreamt that I was at Auntie Ophelia’s house; the front of her house was decorated with gospel music cassette tapes. The doorbell rang and she asked me to answer it; it was a client dropping off a bag of cassette tapes because, in my dream, my aunt is digitizing cassette tapes. The client hands me his bag or tapes and order form, then he passes me a few dollars and says he’d also like to buy some yeast.

I hope in rolls.