When I asked my wife if she wouldn’t mind sharing her wonderful homemade dinner roll recipe for this issue, she agreed. I imagined she would have to dig through all her worn-out, hand-me-down cookbooks and search a flour-dusted page with the instructions.
Instead she texted me a link to the King Arthur Baking Co.’s website.
OK, so it’s not my family’s secret recipe, but I challenge you to find an easier, better tasting recipe! Thank you to the King Arthur Baking Co. for giving us permission to reprint its simply delicious recipe.
Make some for your family! They will make lovely additions to your breadbasket and great sandwiches, too.
Ingredients
- 2 1⁄2 teaspoons instant yeast or active dry yeast
- 7⁄8 to 1 1⁄8 cups (198 to 255 grams) lukewarm water*
- 3 cups (361grams) King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour
- 1 1⁄4 teaspoons salt
- 3 tablespoons (35 grams) sugar
- 6 tablespoons (85 grams) unsalted butter, at room temperature
- 1⁄4 cup (28 grams) Baker’s Special Dry Milk or nonfat dry milk
- 1⁄2 cup (39 grams) instant mashed potato flakes
*Use the lesser amount in summer (or in a humid environment), the greater amount in winter (or in a dry climate), and somewhere in between the rest of the year (or if your house is climate controlled).
Read more: These delicious recipes for garden-grown collard greens go great with homemade rolls!
Instructions
- Combine the all of the ingredients and mix and knead—by hand, mixer or bread machine set on the dough cycle—until you’ve made a smooth dough.
If you’re kneading in a stand mixer, it should take 5 to 7 minutes at second speed, and the dough should barely clean the sides of the bowl, perhaps sticking a bit at the bottom. In a bread machine (or by hand), it should form a smooth ball.
- Place the dough in a lightly greased bowl. Cover the bowl, and allow the dough to rise, at room temperature, until it’s nearly doubled in bulk, about 1 hour. Rising may take longer, especially if you’ve kneaded by hand. Give it enough time to become quite puffy.
- While the dough is rising, lightly grease two 9-inch round cake pans, or a 9-by-13-inch pan.
- Gently deflate the dough, and transfer it to a lightly greased work surface. Divide it into 16 pieces.
- Shape each piece into a rough ball by pulling the dough into a very small knot at the bottom, then rolling it under the palm of your hand into a smooth ball.
- Place eight rolls in each of the round cake pans (or all 16 rolls in the 9-by-13-inch pan), spacing them evenly; they won’t touch one another.
- Cover the pan(s) with lightly greased plastic wrap, and allow the rolls to rise till they’re very puffy, and have reached out and touched one another, about 1 hour. While the rolls are rising, preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
- Bake the rolls until they’re a deep golden brown on top, and lighter on the sides, about 25 minutes.
- Remove the rolls from the oven, and after 2 or 3 minutes, carefully transfer them to a rack. They’ll be hot and delicate, so be careful. Serve warm, or at room temperature.
Sidebar: Baker Tips
- Brush hot-from-the-oven rolls with melted butter, if desired, for a soft, buttery crust.
- For snowflake rolls, gently shake flour from a sieve atop the warm rolls.
- When making yeast rolls or bread, let the dough rise to the point the recipe says it should, e.g., “Let the dough rise until it’s doubled in bulk.” Rising times are only a guide; there are so many variables in yeast baking that it’s impossible to say that bread dough will always double in bulk in a specific amount of time.
This dinner roll recipe, provided by the King Arthur Baking Co., originally appeared in the November/December 2020 issue of Hobby Farms magazine.
