Lowell Guest Post: The Dough Whisperer

Like many families, mine gathers at Christmas time every year to stuff our faces with delicious food and spend time together. In my family there is one food item that is non-negotiable: mom's orange rolls. These rolls have become legendary in my family; my mother makes 13 billion of them (an intergalactic baker's dozen). And no one sees her do it. It's a Christmas miracle!

If you spend this special day at my mother's house you would see mountains of dough in various stages of rising, a huge bowl of grated orange rind and you would experience the drool-inducing smell of rolls baking. You would not see my mother making them. We don't know how she does it. Us kids will gorge ourselves and take home our fair share of the bounty, and she will give these rolls away to almost everyone she knows but the creative process would have been entirely unobserved.

This year she allowed me to sit in so I could learn to make them. I learned she ground her own flour (?!) and that she doesn't really measure anything. I watched carefully as she kneaded and divided the dough. She pounded one half out into a ideal rectangle of perfect thickness and covered it with brown sugar and orange rind. This was then rolled into a cylinder of buttery, orangey, doughy goodness. The other half was meant for me to roll out. As part of my education.

It all looked so easy. The lumpy trapezoid that I created was almost insulting to her seemingly careless, but ideal, golden rectangle. Although my rolls ultimately turned out fine, they didn't seem to taste as good as Mom's. I have only myself to blame. Some mysteries shouldn't be tampered with.