HEDGEHOG ROLLS

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A little project for you or the kids. Or maybe you and your kids – make your own family of hedgehogs!

Kids can’t go wrong with dough. It’s doughty stuff! They can push it, pull it, tear it, thump it, drop it, throw it and it will thrive! Make this a fun activity at the weekend, or why not make it part of home-schooling when you need a break from relentless screen and book work, and tie it in with the science curriculum?

Did you know yeast is a fungus? It’s also known as sugar fungus (saccharomyces). All you need to make bread is flour, water, yeast and a little salt. Easy, huh? So easy, in fact, we’ve been doing it for thousands of years – on hot stones, in clay or iron pots, on ashes, in the ground under ashes... So, a modern oven and some ready dried yeast should make it a doddle!

To start producing the bubbles of gas to rise your bread, the yeast needs some sugar to feed on. It’s its best thing. And flour is full of it, but it’s all locked up in bigger starch molecules and the yeast can’t get to it. Once we add the water, the starch structures swell, allowing enzymes in the flour to work on the starch and break it into simple sugars. Yeast feasts on the sugar and produces carbon dioxide as a waste product. If bread was a liquid (like beer!) we’d see the bubbles rising to the surface, but in bread, it gets trapped by the stretchy gluten structure which fills like balloons within the dough.

Your job is to knead the bread to create the stretchy gluten ready to trap the gas and then wait until each ‘balloon’ has filled, so your bread is light and fluffy. Mostly, nature is going to do all the hard work for you.
All you need is some bread flour, a little salt, some ready dried yeast and some tap water. You don’t even need scales – you can cheat with a coffee mug and a teaspoon. Have fun!

Ingredients

750g strong white flour
450g tepid water (ie vaguely warm to the touch)
7g (one sachet) instant dried yeast
12g fine salt
 
Or, if you don't have scales:
2 ½ x coffee mugs, loosely packed strong white flour
1 x coffee mug tepid water (full, to brim)
1 x 7g sachet fast action ready yeast
1 heaped teaspoon fine salt

Method:
Mix all your ingredients in a bowl until you have a rough dough and no loose flour left. Tip it out onto the counter and knead the dough for about 10 or 15 minutes until it’s smooth, elastic and stretchy. There are lots of ways to knead dough, but as long as you continuously push or pull the dough and then fold it back over itself, you’ll be developing that gluten. 

Once your dough is kneaded, form into a ball, put in a flour dusted bowl & cover with a cloth for about 1.5 hours until it’s doubled in size. Now remove the dough, slap it with the flat of your hand to remove all the gas before you divide it into 10—12 equal pieces of dough. 

​Shape each piece into a little round ball with a smooth top, taking care to squish out any bubbles that appear at this stage (plenty of time for more bubbles to grow as it proves for a second time). Now take a ball and fold over itself so you have an oval shape. Finally, roll one end to a long point for the ‘snout’ of your hedgehog.

If you want to add seeds, now is the time. Dampen a cloth, roll your hedgehog’s back on the cloth, then roll it on a plate of poppy or black sesame seeds. Place each one on a baking tray, remembering to space well out as you want them to double in size.

Cover again with a cloth and leave to prove for another 1.5 hours. Remember, yeast feeds more slowly if it's cold, so give it a little longer on a cold day or if your kitchen is cool. Never be tempted to hurry things along in an airing cupboard. They're usually much too warm! The yeast will be happy if you just let it take its time.

Bread is baked in a really hot oven, so make sure you preheat your oven to 240C at least 20 minutes before you need to use it. Perhaps set a timer for 1 hour after you have shaped your hedgehogs to remind you to turn it on.

​When your little rolls are ready, they will have roughly doubled in size and when you gently press the dough it will bounce slowly back. If you wish to, you can add a couple of pumpkin seeds or currants for eyes.  For those you haven’t covered in seeds, you can sprinkle a little flour on their backs. 

Before they go into the oven, we have to cut the hedgehogs’ ‘spikes’. To do this, hold your scissors almost horizontally and cut row upon row of spikes. You will cut them flat, but they will spike up as the dough springs up in the oven.

As the tray of rolls go into the oven, throw half an eggcup of water onto the bottom of the oven to provide some steam. Close the oven door and turn the temperature down to 220C and bake for 15-20 minutes until golden brown. The longer the bake the crisper the crust, so feel free to leave them in longer – just watch the tips of your hedgehogs’ spines don’t burn!

Allow to cool on a rack – a clean grill pan will do as long as air can circulate and allow the steam to escape from the roll or you’ll find the bottoms will be a bit soft and soggy.

Once cool, you can bag up (and freeze) any you don’t want straight away.

How will you eat yours? Tear off the spikes and dip into something delicious or cut open and fill with your favourite sandwich filling. How about hedgehog hotdogs? Have fun and happy baking!