Caramelized Onion and Thyme Rolls

I love bread.  My favorite smell may be of freshly baked bread.  I love bread (how much you say?) so much that my grandmother taught me by telephone how to bake it myself when I went to college.   As in, emergency calls of a panicked college kid asking "are you sure it's supposed to look like this?"

You see, my grandmother (Nanny) was the family baker and chef and passed down her love of kitchen experimentation to my mother and then to me.  In fact, my fondest family memories mostly revolve around the dining room and kitchen.  Her cookbook and appliance collection were the stuff of legend.  When she was alive, I began to borrow her cookbooks.  As in, permanently borrowed.  I didn't realize then that she was passing them down.  Now that she has passed, I have most of her baking and Jewish themed cookbooks.  I even have her Bread Machine.

Don't knock the beauty of a bread machine until you buy one and try it.  I use my bread machine to knead for me while I multi-task.  I do not bake in the machine.  Yeah, I could just use a mixer, but the one I have is fairly lousy and the bread machine has a timer so I don't have to figure it out.  I knead the dough in the bread machine and then take it out to make it into rolls.  If I bake it into a loaf, I eat the loaf of bread.  Consider rolls as portion control.

I had some leftover caramelized onions and fresh thyme lying about in the freezer and fridge from earlier in the week (caramelized onions may be my version of food gold), and surprisingly also had some spare time in the middle of the week (this is a supreme rarity.)

Caramelized Onions...food gold!

This bread was made to pair with my Sephardic White Bean Stew but they are a great savory roll to have on hand for any meal.  The fresh thyme provides a great herbal note and the caramelized onion provides an earthy background note.

Ingredients:

1 and 1/2 cups water
2 tablespoons olive oil
4 cups bread flour
1 1/2 tablespoon honey (or vegan cane sugar if you are vegan or have no honey on hand)
2 teaspoons salt
1 tablespoon minced fresh thyme
3 tablespoons caramelized onions
2 1/2 teaspoons bread machine yeast

Recipe:

It's a bread machine, so follow your machine's instructions.  Mine makes me put the liquids in first with the salt, and then the flour, then extras, then yeast.  Check on the bread throughout the kneading process to make sure the dough is starting to look smooth.  Add more flour or water as needed to make the dough ball smooth. 

When the dough is kneaded fully, you can leave the dough in the machine to bake or do what I do and form it into rolls for portion control.  This would be a great sandwich bread!!!