Cheesy Pinwheel Rolls

This recipe was inspired by a friend of mine. Her blog is private, but she posted about how she'd taken her dinner roll recipe and made a loaf of garlic bread out of it. I always have tons of garlic on hand, and at that time I also had some leftover cheese I needed to use up, so that's how this recipe was born. I just used my regular dinner roll recipe from my Better Homes and Gardens Cook Book (which I thought I'd already posted, but I guess not!), then added a couple extras to make it more spiffy.

If you're reading this, thanks for the inspiration, Jenn!

Ingredients:
4 1/2 - 4 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 package active dry yeast
1 cup milk
1/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup butter, plus extra for spreading on rolls
3/4 teaspoon salt
2 eggs, beaten
garlic, minced
mozzarella, shredded

In a medium mixing bowl, stir together 2 cups of the flour and the yeast. In a medium saucepan, heat and stir milk, sugar, butter and salt just until warm and butter almost melts (120-130 degrees). Add milk mixture to dry mixture along with eggs. Beat with an electric mixer on low to medium speed for 30 seconds, scraping sides of bowl constantly. Beat on high speed for 3 minutes. Stir in as much remaining flour as you can. Then knead dough on counter, adding remaining flour until you get a moderately stiff dough that is smooth and elastic. Shape into a ball, cover and let rise in a warm place until doubled in size (about 1 hour).

Roll out the dough into a large rectangle (or as close to one as you can get -- you're going to roll it up and then slice it, so it doesn't need to be perfect by any means), getting it as thin as you can. Spread a generous layer of butter all over the rolled out dough. Then sprinkle the minced garlic as evenly as you can. Then top with cheese. The more, the merrier! Face it, this is not diet friendly, and you will gain a few pounds. So you might as well go all out. ;) This picture I took the first time I made it, and I didn't put nearly enough cheese. So if yours looks like mine, add more cheese! Keep going. Little more. Titch more. There! That should do it.

Roll it up.

Slice it up. I just used my pizza cutter, but you could use a really sharp knife or even dental floss (I've never tried that, but I've heard it works great). I cut mine into 1.5-2 inch pieces. Place on a baking sheet a couple inches apart.

Cover and allow to rise for 30 minutes. Then bake at 375 for about 12 minutes, or until golden brown.

Uhhh, YUM?!