Sweet Rolls on Sunday

Or more like it, sweet little hockey pucks on Sunday.

Yesterday was not a banner day in the kitchen for me, but that's okay - you win some, you lose some. Still it's frustrating, especially since I wasn't even trying something new.

I seem to be having a major problem with yeast lately. I've tried fast rising and regular on both pizza dough and other doughs and I'm not having much luck. I just can't get the dough to rise! Now sometimes I have found that dough will take longer to rise than the recipe states, but these are recipes I've tried before - recipes that worked the way the recipe said it should. It's not like I'm new to yeast either - I don't use it all that often, but I've made plenty of pizza crusts and those tried and trues aren't even working all that well.

The failed sticky buns - they should be about twice the size they are -
still tasted pretty good with all that gooey topping.

I've checked the yeast - it's not expired or old. I've checked the water temp - usually around 110º. I give it a nice, warm environment to rise in - I turn the oven on briefly, let it cool down a bit, and put the dough in to rise. It's draft-free - covered in plastic wrap with a kitchen towel on top.

This happened last week when I made the pumpkin rolls, but I baked them anyway and they rose very nicely during baking, just not when they were supposed to. No such luck this time - these buns did not rise much when I baked them, so no last-minute reprieve for these rolls.

Unfortunately with the holidays fast-approaching and a very long list of baked goods I'd like to make, I'll probably have to put my yeast problem on the back burner for now. We'll see......

Fortunately the soup that DH made for dinner was NOT a failure. He whipped up a chicken soup using chicken thighs, corn, peas, rice, barley, wild rice and a few other odds and ends. Very tasty.