Repurposing dough

I made pizza last night as anyone who knows me would know, it was made from scratch. I didn't think to take a picture of it then and a left over piece from the fridge just doesn't look the same. I made a full batch of dough and was planning a smallish pizza; so, instead of using olive oil, I used butter. Why butter? Because I like to repurpose my dough the next morning and I was curious if butter would yield an acceptable pizza crust (I didn't notice the difference in oil) and make a softer dough when repurposed.

Repurpose...dough? Yes, but there's a bit of planning needed. I wouldn't go from sweet dough to pizza crust. Anyway, this morning I added an egg, some melted butter, a tablespoon of sugar, and flour until it looked and felt right, then let it rest for a bit. Resting also lets the moisture level in the dough equalize a bit so a little forgiveness for under kneading. Presto! Sweet roll dough and there's only one thing to do with that: make cinnamon rolls. [Yes, there are other things but this is quick.] Roll it out, spread on softened butter, sprinkle brown sugar and cinnamon, roll it up, cut it and place in a pan and... wait.

Fresh from the oven, they are warm and soft but after cooling a bit the edge pieces do lack the softness that a regular sweet roll would have. However, given that it was 11:15 and I'd been waiting for cinnamon rolls since I got up at 8:00, they were delicious. When experimenting, the results are definitely skewed positive when you're really hungry. But they're homemade cinnamon rolls fresh from the oven. That's hard to mess up.

Moral of this story

When making yeast dough, don't limit yourself. One batch of dough, if planned carefully, can be used for a variety of things.

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