Recipe: Homemade Crescent Rolls

'Tis the Season for baking, and a cook's best friend this time of year can easily be a can of Pillsbury Crescent Rolls {see this link for recipe ideas...and no, they do not pay me for suggesting them}. Since I've gotten pretty handy at making most of my own bread products, and since my husband loves a good crescent roll, I figured I would give that flaky, buttery bread a shot.

So...on to Pinterest. I found a recipe that liked the finished product, but the process was NOT fun. NONE of my dough was looking anything like the pictures. AND I was practically dropping globs of dough onto my stone and hoping they came out right. And they did taste yummy, but it was not a recipe I was going to pass on...yet. {I'll be posting the original recipe link below in a minute in hopes that one of my cooking friends will try it and maybe tell me what I did wrong}.
I then adjusted the recipe. The second batch was much easier to work with. I added another cup of flour to the original recipe, changed when I added the ingredients, and floured my surface A LOT more, and ended up with some yummy biscuits. That's right, I said biscuits. They were good, but were not flaky like those crescent rolls I love so much.

And then I adjusted the recipe again. This is the recipe I'll be sharing with you. These were still messy. They weren't as flaky as the first batch, but not biscuits. I almost overcooked them as well because they were just so fluffy when I pulled them out, that I thought they weren't done on the inside.So after three tries, I'm going to give  you my best effort. Enjoy...and I got the original recipe from The Big Red Pot.

Homemade Crescent Rolls
Ingredients: 

• 2 1/4 tsp yeast
• 1/2 cup warm water
• 1 Tbsp, plus 1 tsp sugar
• 3 1/2 cups flour, divided
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 4 Tbsp salted butter, room temperature
• 1 Tbsp butter, frozen
• 1 Tbsp butter, melted 

Directions: 

1. In a large mixing bowl, dissolve yeast and sugar in the warm water. Let sit for 5 minutes until foamy. 
2. Add 2 1/2 cups flour, salt, and room temperature butter. Mix on low speed, until well blended. Cover with a clean towel, and let sit for 45 minutes. 
3. YOU ARE GOING TO NEED AT LEAST THE REST OF THE FLOUR FOR THE NEXT STEP. Be prepared for a mess. 
4. After 45 minutes, pour the dough onto a WELL-FLOURED surface. Make sure your hands and any utensils you use have flour on them as well. The dough is super sticky. Roll into a large circle {the recommended size in the original recipe was a circle with a 12 inch diameter. This was too thick for me}. Using a floured pizza roller, cut your triangles {again, the recommended number was 12, but I'm pretty sure all of mine yielded more than that}. 
5. GRATE your frozen butter over the triangles. 
6. Roll the crescents, starting at the large base {opposite of the point of the triangle}. I used a very flat floured spatula to help me flip the dough over and over until I reached the tip of the triangle. This seemed to work best. Place the rolls onto a stone or a well-oiled baking sheet. Cover with a clean towel. 
7. Keep the rolls covered while heating the oven to 400 degrees. 
8. Uncover the rolls and bake for 18 minutes. 
9. When they remove, brush with melted butter. 

Here's my beautiful daughter helping me out. 

SO MESSY. See how the well-floured ones turned out like crescents [top] and some were more globs [bottom]?
And my fingers were well covered and super sticky. NOT fun. 

This was my counter afterwards. SO much flour. 

This was the first batch. I stuffed them with leftover ham from Thanksgiving and some cheese. YUM

So you see here that once you figure out how to make them, you can go crazy with what you put in them. I made one batch that I filled with cinnamon sugar and served for breakfast with a powdered sugar icing. The kids loved them. 

Give them a try and let me know what you think.