makes 1 dozen small rolls
If you’ve made my sourdough starter, you know that it uses pureed grapes mixed with rye flour. After a few days, the mixture has a pleasant wine-like aroma. I’ve also made starters with raisins, which are, after all, simply dried grapes with concentrated sweetness. I often try to think of ways to use dried fruits in the winter months, when their summer flavors are sorely missed. For these rolls, I decided to plump raisins in hot water, then blend them and use the resulting puree in the dough to showcase the raisins in a subtle way, rather than using them as pinpoints of intense sweetness. The final rolls capture much of the flavor profile of grapes, and the sugars in the raisins also feed the yeast to create distinctive fermented notes.