It does sound lovely, except for the flat rolls, but enough mojitos and you're good, LOL. I love your description of your family, it sounds a lot like mine except we don't have a Mexican. Yet. Everyone from the college educated engineer to the police officer/firefighter to the old farmers, add a Jewish DIL on Elery's side plus his family from Tennessee and we've got a bit of everything. (grin) OK, the butterlake rolls recipe, easy as can be. Even San made a batch a few years ago and was successful and she told me she did NOT bake bread. Ever. This halves easily, I just use a whole egg, I don't try to halve it and I use all butter, no shortening. Butterflake Rolls 2 packages active dry yeast 2 cups warm water 1/2 cup sugar 2 tsp salt 6 to 6 1/2 cups flour 1 egg 1/2 cup shortening (use butter) 1/2 cup butter, softened. In mixing bowl, dissolve yeast in warm water. Add sugar, salt and 2 cups flour. Beat on medium speed for 2 minutes. Add egg and shortening, mix well, stir in enough flour to form a soft dough. Do not knead. Cover and refrigerate overnight. In the morning, punch dough down and divide into 4 portions. Roll each portion into a 14 x 12 inch rectangle, spread 2 tbls butter over dough. Fold in half lengthwise and cut into 12 strips. Tie each strip into a knot, tuck and pinch ends under. Place 2 inches apart on greased baking sheets. Repeat with remaining dough. Cover and let rise until doubled, about 1 hour. Bake at 400 for 10-12 minutes or until golden brown. Yield: 4 dozen And congratuations on the "grown up" dinner, it sounds perfect to me. Annie

I bet this recipe will do very well in the refrigerator. I would spray a sheet of plastic wrap with vegetable spray and tuck it over the dough to help maintain the moisture in the dough. Another way to keep moisture in is to place the dough inside a 2-gallon zip-lock bag and press out as much air from the bag as possible before closing it. If you find the dough gets a little dry, add some mashed potatoes (or potato flakes) to the recipe, and I think you will be good to go. In "The Baking Book" the author and microbiologiest, Lloyd M. Moxon, who specializes in yeast biochemistry explains why. "Mashed potatoes - or any pureed vegetable - is vital for refrigerator doughs because it preserves moisture in the dry climate of the refrigerator." Adding mashed potatoes was quite common for refrigerator recipes - Betty Crocker's Refrigerator Bread Recipe is a classic, and it includes mashed potatoes. What happens to refrigerated dough... Retarding dough in the refrigerator has a few up-sides. The bacteria will produce some tasty acids so the flavor is enhanced. While the yeast is dormant and no longer consuming the sugars, the bacteria feeds on them and you'll get more complex flavors. Chilling the dough will probably result in a slightly more open texture. But on the down-side, it also may reduce the ovenspring and the loaf volume. There is "trick" I found in "CookWise" by Shirley O. Corriher, you can do if you find the loaf volume is smaller than normal and would like more volume. After chilling the dough, you can dissolve a little yeast (1/2 t.) in a few tablespoons of warm water and knead this into the dough before shaping. Another thing you may notice, the bread won't be as dark brown and the whole wheat flavor more mild. That's a characteristic from the long hydration time. Let us know how it goes.... -Grainlady

If you use a "modern" version of a starter that uses baker's yeast in the recipe, it will eventually die out due to the acidic environment, and if there has been sufficient inoculation of natural yeast from the flour, the baker's yeast will eventually be replaced with natural (aka wild) yeast. This method isn't right or wrong, just one of the endless choices for starter recipes. When it comes to developing a starter with a strong colony of yeast, choose wholegrain flour for the first 2-3 feedings and then you can use whatever type of flour you wish. The outside of all whole grains are covered with yeast so that is your best source for yeast, more so than the air. If you want to mill small quantities of wholegrain flour yourself you can use a coffee/spice mill. Rye flour ferments faster than wheat or spelt (and rye starter also smells pretty bad but works like a charm). Spelt flour has more carbohydrates and is a good choice. All flour, including bleached/unbleached flour, will work. You can even make gluten-free starter with rice flour. There are recipes that use grapes in the mixture in the mixture as an additional source for yeast, and the gray sheen on grapes is naturally occuring yeast and the grape juice adds more sugars for the yeast to feed on (although there are more than enough "sugars" (carbohydrates) in flour for the yeast to feed on. Other sources for yeast in starter recipes can be found on cabbage leaves (the gray dusty sheen on the leaves is yeast; and I have recipes that use peach leaves in the starter as a source of yeast). Starter is a study of contradictions. All you need to do is do a search on the "care and feeding of sourdough starters" to quickly see the contradictions. My best suggestion is to try a number of methods until you find one that works best for you. When one starter dies, there are plenty more recipes to choose from. I use a starter called "Everlasting Yeast" that was popular just over 100 years ago and is just a little different from traditional starter. Helpful hints: -If your starter doesn't double in bulk when fed, it probably won't double your bread dough. -Until you know how your starter acts/reacts when resting in the refrigerator, you may want to place it on a deep-dish pie tin/dish. It's not completely unheard of for a starter to occasionally escape the confines of the jar/container while in the refrigerator. It's a lot easier to clean the pie dish than the entire refrigerator. I cover my pint jar with a small Quick Cover (looks like a tiny shower cap) with some holes poked in the cover for the fermenting gasses to escape. -If you don't have all day to make sourdough bread and you need to speed things up a bit, add 1/8 t. of SAF-Instant Yeast to your dough. -When I don't want to make bread and hate to waste 1-cup of starter to feed it, I make 8-crumpets per King Arthur Flour Recipe entitled "Sourdough Crumpets or How to Resurrect a Neglected Starter". For each 1 cup of sourdough starter, sprinkle over the surface: 1 t. sugar 1/2 t. salt 1/2 t. baking soda [Grainlady note: I use a 4-cup measuring cup because this mixture foams-up quite a bit and it's easier to pour the batter from the measuring cup.] Whisk these ingredients in thoroughly. Preheat your griddle and grease your crumpet rings. Place rings on the pre-heated griddle and add 1/4-inch of batter to the ring. Cook over low/medium heat until the tops are set and full of holes (the batter also looses its glossy sheen). Remove the rings (twist back and forth with a pair of tongs to loosen the crumpet and then lift the ring) and flip the crumpets over for a minute or two. [Grainlady note: if you only have 4 crumpet rings like I do, I flip the rings so the side that didn't have the baked crumpets on is now on the bottom. Now you don't have to clean and grease your rings for the second batch.] To serve crumpets you pop them in the toaster to brown and crisp. Top with butter and your favorite jam/marmalade/jelly.... I like to add flavorings to the crumpet batter, such as orange/coconut or King Arthur's Fiori di Sicilia. I sometimes add some herbs and finely chopped ham or sausage crumbles for something a little heartier for a brunch crumpet and toast them flat in the toaster oven. Crumpets freeze well. Cool separately on a cooling rack, then quick freeze while laying flat. Separate the frozen crumpets with a square of parchment paper, stack and place in a freezer bag. Don't stack crumpets like you would pancakes off the griddle because they tend to stick together. -Grainlady Here is a link that might be useful: Sourdough Primer - King Arthur Flour

Thanks Deb! I've been looking for a better recipe and this might be the one. I'll be trying it! Danielle