My Favorite Recipes Collection: Pao (Dinner rolls) Eggless recipe (Without Sour Dough starter)

The Pao Bread, which is the bread that is served with the bhaji in India especially in Mumbai. It is common street food. Pao is almost like a dinner roll but made with few very simple ingredients. It’s actually what a common man in Mumbai eats almost everyday for breakfast. Pav is eaten with butter and also with vada (deep fried potato fritters). In India when I was growing up, my mom would buy these buns from a local bakery which made these buns every morning and she would give us these buns with warm milk The taste of these buns soaked in warm milk is till fresh in my taste buds and palate memory. Earlier I had posted a recipe when I made these with sour dough starter. However lot of my readers and friends who don't have sour dough starter were inquiring about how to make or get sour dough started. I do have recipe for sour dough starter on my blog, you can also buy the starter from King Arthur's Flour website.

This time I decided to make these without the sour dough starter and combined my recipe with recipe of my friend in Chile South America who had shared her recipe for the rolls she had made for us for breakfast that I had mentioned earlier. This recipe yields 16 buns which are size of American dinner rolls but I only made 12 rolls and I made 4 chili garlic cilantro naan with remaining dough, which came out good too (I will post this recipe next.) One more interesting note, in Gujrat, Kutch, Mumbai and Goa they call the bread "pao" which I did not know where this word came from until our recent visit to South America, when we visited Brazil where the main spoken language is Portuguese. In Portuguese they call bread "Pao". This make sense now, long time ago Portuguese had landed in Goa and that is where the word Pao came from and was adapted in neighboring states of Gujrat, Maharastra, I grew up in Agra and they don't call bread Pao, it is known and Double Roti :)

Ingredients:

6 cups AP flour (someone was asking if they can use whole wheat flour, I said yes why not?)
3/4 tablespoon salt (I used 1 tbls but little too much I thought)
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 cup warm water or milk for yeast (I used water)
1 tablespoon sugar
1 tablespoon yeast (one pack of dry active yeast of instant yeast)
1/2 cup oil
3/4 cup -1 cup of water to make dough (add little at time)
1 and 1/2 tablespoon of melted butter
Some extra flour to roll the dough on board
Cooking oil spray
2 tablespoon of milk to brush on buns before baking
Some extra butter to brush on buns after baking

Method:

Put packet of yeast in warm water or milk and cover it, let it froth.
In the mean time, attach hook on your electric mixer.
Mix all the dry ingredient on very low speed.
Add oil and mix it again on low speed.
Add active yeast and water mix
Mix again and low speed.
Then add 3/4 cup of water then add little more if needed. Dough should be of soft consistency.
Mix at medium to high speed until the dough starts receding the bow.
Take the bowl out of mixture and add melted butter, incorporate it in the dough with your hands.
Place the bowl back on mixer again and mix at high speed until the dough start receding the bowl again

Hand kneed the dough and make it in to a ball and place it back in bowl.
Cover it with plastic and place in warm place for min of one hour or maximum of 3-4 hours until it doubles or triples in size.
I usually preheat the oven at 100 degrees F and turn the oven off and place the bowl in the oven and this provide nice warm place for dough to rise, for those of you who have gas oven, just heat of pilot light in the oven would do the same.

Once the dough is risen, place it on a floured board.
Punch and take all the air out of it and kneed it well.
Make it in a ball again.
Divide the dough ball in to eight pieces and divide each portion in to two and make balls.
Spray cooking oil on a 9 x 13 baking deep pan.
Place the balls in 4 rows of 3 each spaced about 1" apart.
Cover the pan and place it in warm area for it to rise again for min of 30 and maximum of 60 min
Then preheat the oven at 450 degree F (you have to bake the rolls at 400 but I usually preheat it 50 degrees more as when you open he oven you can loose some heat)
In the mean time brush the rolls with paper towel soaked in milk.

Place the baking pan with rolls in the preheated oven (uncovered) and decrease the temp to 400 degrees F.
Bake for 25 min or until the rolls are golden brown and edges are receding the pan.
Take it out of oven carefully and brush with butter.
Let the cool and serve warm.
These freeze well too.