VeganMoFo: Pesto pinwheel roll recipe

This post is part of the Vegan Month of Food - or VeganMoFo to you and me. To learn more about VeganMoFo, click here.

This is another recipe prompted by a gift of free food from friends.

A very good friend of mine has cupboards so crammed full of bits and pieces she looks like she's experimenting with survivalism, stockpiling dry goods in preparation for the end of days.

Every now and again, when the chaos threatens to engulf her kitchen, she'll donate a few goodies to me. "You like olives, don't you? I don't. I don't know why I've got two jars of olive paste. Do you want them?"  

Do I? Course I do. Only then I find myself with two jars of olive paste and no idea what to do with them - so here's what I came up with: pinwheel rolls.

I used the olive paste for half the rolls, and some vegan pesto for the other half. End result: soup's best friend.

Olive or Pesto Pinwheel Rolls

Ingredients
One and a half teaspoons of quick yeast
One teaspoon of sugar
One dessertspoon of olive oil, plus extra for greasing
200mls of warm water
3 cups of bread flour (white or wholemeal, or a mix of both)
Half to one teaspoon of salt
Tapenade, vegan pesto or similar


How you do it
Put the yeast, oil and sugar into the water (you want warm, but not boiling - you should be able to put your hand in it comfortably) and leave it for five minutes.

After five minutes, the mixture should have a frothy top on it.

In a large bowl, combine the flour and salt (you can add anywhere between half or one teaspoon, according to taste or if you're trying to cut your salt intake), then add the liquid.

Using a wooden spoon, mix until all combined. You should end up with a single lump of dough that comes away from the side of the bowl. If it's still too wet - that is, it sticks to your fingers - add a little more flour until the sticky feel is gone.

On a floured board, knead the dough for five to ten minutes, until it becomes elastic.

Oil another bowl, and put the dough in it. Cover the dough with a damp teatowel and leave it for 30 to 45 minutes, until it's doubled in size.

Knock the dough back - that is, give it a good couple of punches, then knead for another couple of minutes.

On the floured board, roll out the dough out into a rectangle the thickness of a couple of pound coins.

Spread a thin layer of pesto, tapenade or something similar over the surface of the dough.

Then, using the longer side, roll up the dough like a Swiss roll, until you've got a long dough sausage.

Cut into eight, and you should have a few pinwheel rolls, that look a bit like this.

Put the rolls into a greased baking dish, cover with the damp teatowel and leave for another 30 minutes or so. They'll grow in size a bit more, so leave them a bit of room - say an inch or so between rolls so they have room to expand comfortably - a bit like this.

Sprinkle a little more salt and drizzle olive oil over the top of the rolls (leave this bit out if you don't fancy it.)

After the half-hour is up, cook the rolls at 200 degrees C for 20 to 25 minutes, until they've got a light golden crust.