Dairy Free Mini Pumpkin Bread Rolls

If you want your Thanksgiving to be cute, delicious, and possibly earn a Paul Hollywood handshake, the results of this brief report will demonstrate with statistical and clinical significance that you should definitely give this recipe a try. Even if you are baking dairy free! 

Method: Recipe Notes and Dairy-Free Modifications

1. Get yourself the book A Bake for All Seasons by the Great British Baking Show (aka Great British Bake Off). (Hint: as of the day of this post it is on sale on Amazon, but I also recommend buying local or running to your local library). 

2. Gather your ingredients. Placing them under a gingham cloth is optional. 

3. Mix your dry ingredients. I chose to hold off on adding the salt until the next step, to prevent deactivating the yeast. 

4. (DAIRY-FREE MODIFICATION #1) The recipe calls for whole milk. I substituted almond milk, but used the lower end of the range of volume specified because it is a thinner liquid than whole milk. To warm it, I heated it in my microwave for 30 seconds, which yielded a temperature of 99F. 

5. Adding in the pumpkin and oil- got the measurement right on the nose. 

6. Knead away! This is what it looks like when just combined. 

7. Make sure if it is fully kneaded. The cookbook and show have great tips on knowing when your dough is ready. I tried and failed to get a good photo of me stretching out a bit of dough to see if it was transparent. 

8. Give yourself and the dough permission to rest. 

9. Amazing what time can do. 

10. To test if the dough was ready, per cookbook instructions, I pushed my finger into the dough. It did not spring back, so I knew it was ready (how do I know if it is the dreaded over-proved though?). 

11. Here's the part that took a while. You divide the dough, then wrap each little dough ball with twine to make 8 sections. I cut my twine in advance, thinking I was being so prepared, but I wish I had tried one before committing the rest. The strings were just long enough, so even my relatively small fingers struggled with tying. 

11a. Really, Prue and Paul? They don't need to be exactly the same? Could have fooled me! 

12. After the second proof, you're ready with your egg wash (egg with almond milk- dairy free modification #2). 

13. Then it's ready, set, bake! I added pecan quarters instead of walnuts because that is what I had, and I think they worked well. 

Results

While I cannot imagine what Paul Hollywood would actually thinking of my poor attempts at baking bread, I found the results to be deliciously tender with a relatively open crumb. The pumpkin flavor is not overpowering, so it would be a nice complement to Thanksgiving meal. Save your actual pumpkin bread for dessert.

Discussion

Making most bread dairy free should be relatively straightforward. The simplest breads will just have flour, yeast, salt, and water. Enriched breads will begin to have more complex ingredients that can be tricky with those with dairy allergies or restrictions, such as milk and butter. Here, instead of using whole milk, we substituted almond milk. While sometimes it can be a 1:1 substitution, I often err on the side of caution and add a little less since almond milk tends to be thinner than milk. If you use a creamier option like oat milk or cashew milk, you may not need to consider this as much. For creamy dairy free substitutions in recipes, check out my other posts Dairy Free Bourbon Bread Pudding or Spinach and Artichoke Pasta with Chicken. If you're looking for a last minute, dairy free bread roll for your Thanksgiving dinner, you'll have a winner with Burger Buns in Under 1 Hour. 

If you're looking for an fall or Thanksgiving-themed bread roll for your next gathering, give these mini pumpkin bread rolls a try!