ABin5 Challah, Part II: Almost Famous’s Poppy Seed Onion Rolls

Way back when, I used to frequent an Upper West Side kosher spot called Famous’s Dairy Restaurant. The waitress would bring out baskets of warm poppy seed onion rolls that were fantastic. The onions were carmelized, even burnt, on the outside, and translucent on the inside. They were perfect plain, but what roll isn’t better with a little butter?

The dough was definitely egg-enriched, like challah.

Recreating these rolls was the perfect use for the remaining pound of Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day challah dough.

Actually, I was thinking about using the dough to make the Pletzel recipe, but, truthfully, pletzel has never appealed to me the way that onion rolls do. Onion rolls are basically rolled up pletzel.

Step one is rolling (or pressing) out the dough, same as for the pletzel. This step is easier if the dough (and baking sheet) is well greased with olive oil. I opted to not saute my onions first. I tossed a minced onion with some oil and pressed half onto the top of the dough. The rest of the onion gets pressed into the other side. Some poppy seeds also get added to both sides of the dough.

The dough gets a tri-fold. The resulting roll gets cut into individual rolls. Actually, the above square got cut in half to make two rectangles that were tri-folded. Each roll was cut in four pieces to make eight rolls in total.

I baked the rolls (I was too impatient to wait for the rolls to proof) in a toaster oven at 400 degrees for about a half hour. I lowered the temperature to 350 degrees at the end when the tops of the rolls were browning a bit too much.

The rolls were delicious, almost the same as the rolls I remember. Of course, I could have been a little more precise in the shaping, but the taste was spot on.

I am sending these over to YeastSpotting.

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Tags: Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day, challah, onion rolls, poppy seed onion rolls, yeastspotting