Crescent Pinwheeling into 2019

Did you all make it through the Holidays and the change of year? I'm happy to say that we all did, here. And now that it's 2019, it's time to get back to actual food on the blog!

Today, we're aiming for these Crescent Roll Pinwheels:

There is something really home-y about these that makes me kind of happy to think of them. I don't really make them often (it's been years, honestly), but I had the chance to make them this week and it was pretty fun - and with good results. Here's how we got there:

Note: The shirt is from a company called Litographs. They do shirts/posters/soft goods with the text of books printed on them in artful designs. The one I'm wearing in this is Around the World in 80 Days. I thought I'd mention that because I always have people asking me about the shirts that I have when I wear them. 

As I mentioned in the video, there's not really a recipe to go along with this post. I went to Pillsbury.com and searched "Crescent Pinwheels" for the basics, and then went from there. Basics that I learned: 

• You're supposed to press the triangles together (or use the "crescent sheets") - though that didn't make a huge difference for me.
• About 1 cup of mixed fillings should be enough filling for the full tube of dough (but you'll have to estimate).
• These bake at 350 for about 12-15 minutes. 

As I also mentioned in the video, I opted to try out two different tubes of crescent dough: Pillsbury and "Essential Everyday" (a less-expensive house brand at Cub grocery stores). 

Now, I admit that the difference of somewhere between fifty cents and a dollar per tube (or per 24 pinwheels) seems like an odd thing to worry about. But I also know that there are times when a buck can make a huge difference in your grocery budget. And I figure that if they're going to be on the same shelves in the store - and the house brand obviously compares themselves to Pillsbury - I wanted to know how they would do. 

As I'm sure many of you know, one of the best things about using dough-in-a-cardboard-tube is that you get to whack it on the counter to pop it open. (Okay. Yes. The tubes now specifically say that you're supposed to peel the outer wrap and then press a spoon against the seam until it pops. But... really... what's the fun in that?)

First up: The contender...

No. You're not missing anything. Nothing happened when I whacked it on the edge of the prep table. 

After the underwhelming thud of trying the favorite way of opening the tube, I went for their "spoon at seam" technique. 

However, I wasn't really sure which end of the spoon to use. And - why a spoon and not the tip of a knife? I ended up using the back end of the spoon.

Yes, it worked. No, it wasn't very fun. 

I moved on to the Pillsbury. It did not disappoint. 

That was after one quick whack. No spoon needed. 

I feel like we need to take a moment and compare the two photos, above. Can you see how much bigger the "poof" of the Pillsbury tube is? That dough really wanted room to expand. (Consider this your daily dose of foreshadowing.)

Excitement complete, it was on to the assembly of my pinwheels. 

I unrolled each "rectangle" and then tried to mush them together to get rid of the perforations. You might notice the difference in sizes. The smaller rectangles came from the "inner" portion of the roll. I'm sure that if I wanted to use a rolling pin, I could have gotten them all to the same size. 

This is pre-perforation purge, obviously.

 I chopped up some pepperoni. (I'm guessing that's about half a cup, right?)

I also chopped up the pitted Kalamata olives. (Oddly enough, they seemed to become a smaller amount as I chopped - while the pepperoni seemed to expand.)

First layer: olives on one side, pepperoni on the other.

Second layer: oregano for all!

The olive side really could have used a bit more oomph. If I do this again, I'll probably either get an herbed feta or just add more spice at this stage.

Feta crumbles on the olive set, "Italian cheese blend" on the pepperoni. (The blend was on sale - I honestly don't know what cheeses were in it.)

Oddly enough, this brings us to the step that had me the most nervous. 

Oh. Sorry. No. The rolling-up part didn't make me nervous. Though - as I looked at the way the two different doughs were looking, it did make me wonder a bit.

The dough in the photo above this is the house brand. You can see that it's a little dry looking. The dough in the photo below is the Pillsbury, which seemed much more resilient and supple.

The actual step that had me a little freaked out was the cutting step. The full "sheets" of dough are about 4"x6", so when you roll them up the roll is only about 4" wide - but you're supposed to cut them into 6 pieces.

I started by cutting them in half.

Well... half-ish.

Then I cut each half into thirds.

I kind of loved that one of the online instructions was very specific to say that the next step is to put them on ungreased cookie sheets "cut side down." 

Now, that kind of makes sense for the end pieces (because they have on cut side and one non-cut side), but all the rest have two cut sides. So... apparently they mean that you need to place them "flat" on the cookie sheet, instead of standing up...? That kind of just seems logical. So I'm not sure why they had to make it sound confusing. 

Apologies. That pan looks like it's upside down and floating in space. 

As I was putting them on the pan, I realized that I really should have worked the filling farther to the outer sides. The end pieces looked pretty barren.

You can see the filling in the "middle" pieces, but the end bits look like they're just dough.

On this first pan, all of the olive ones were made on the house brand dough. If you look at the dough on the left, below, you can see a few kind of dry-looking sections. Hmm...

They come out of the oven when they've become golden brown.

Unfortunately, though the Pillsbury ones turned a really nice golden brown (above), the house brand stayed a little lighter on top (though the bottoms were definitely done.)

In reality, these were not blurry. 

This is probably a better comparison shot of the difference:

And then there was the size differential between the two doughs. To make sure that this wasn't a result of the filling, when I baked my second pan, I swapped the fillings. As you can see below, the house brand batches simply didn't puff as well as the Pillsbury. (The Pillsbury ones are about 2-3 inches across. The house brand ones maxed out at about 2 inches.)

You were wondering where the foreshadowing from the tube pop was going to come in, weren't you? 

So... Okay. The house brand pinwheels are a tiny bit smaller, and not quite as golden. But if I didn't have the Pillsbury to compare to, I probably wouldn't have known that. This brings us to the biggest factor: taste...

In other words, I do think that - in this case - I'd vote for the name brand instead of the house brand (at least this house brand).

Although, when put all in the same dish for serving, they look pretty good, no matter what. And - with a total prep time of less than an hour (a bit longer for me, because I was taking pictures and recording video and getting ready to go out), these are a great, quick, variable, snack/appetizer.

Next time I might try one savory and one sweet. Maybe a little cream cheese and cinnamon or strawberry...

Epilogue: People at the party we took them to really seemed to enjoy them. There were two people there who had (I kid you not) never heard of dough-in-a-tube. And they were very impressed.

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What are you hoping to cook up in the new year? Anything you'd like to see me tackle in the kitchen? Let me know!