Guys, I made yeast rolls! Just kidding. I still haven’t gotten over my aversion to working with yeast. Why bother when my husband loves to make bread? Even better, he loves sharing the recipes with you. Take it away, babe…
I don’t know about where you live, but here in Connecticut we seem to get a lot of commercials for restaurants that aren’t even in our state. Sometimes we are lucky and after years of watching those commercials we actually end up with one of the advertised restaurants here, but more often than not it’s not anywhere near where I live and it just stays that way. In this case it was a restaurant advertising “yeast rolls” in the commercial. Inspiration comes from funny places sometimes. I see tasty looking rolls on the TV and immediately think… “I should make those!” (Viola, inspiration.)
This set me to searching the interwebs for a copy cat recipe for a restaurant I was pretty sure I’d never actually get a chance to eat at. I stumbled across a few different recipes claiming to be just like the yeast rolls from the commercial, but all 3 or 4 recipes I found had a combined total of 3 comments on them, and they weren’t exactly glowing reviews. Worse than that, the recipes themselves seemed to be written to try to confuse people that don’t make a lot of bread. I accepted the sparse results, unfavorable reviews, and misleading directions as a challenge. I would make them easy to make for everyone and make them taste good using crazy ninja bread making skills.
I do have a little bit of a disadvantage though since I have no idea what the “real thing” tastes like. I went looking to see where one of these restaurants might be, just in case I could go to it for research purposes, and I discovered that in the combined area of Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, and New York there are only five (and as theorized, none are in Connecticut). This means I really have nothing to compare to when I’m done so I’ll be basing my opinion of their awesomeness exclusively on whether or not I think they are tasty.
I didn’t include as many step by step photos as I normally do because I’ve noticed that all the prep photos pretty much look the same no matter what bread I’m making. However, I did want to show you how I portioned out the dough balls in the baking dish. This below photo is step #14 of the directions.
After the second rise of the dough was done, look at these beauts now. They almost look good enough to eat now. You know, except they are raw and would be gross.
And now back to Tina… Yup, they’re awesome. My husband’s ninja bread instruction writing and bread baking skills to the rescue. I looked at the instructions he had to deal with and the ones he wrote and I’m pretty sure you’re going to like his better. The overall result is delicious pillowy soft rolls just waiting to be torn into while they are still hot. When you break into them the steam comes out, just like the commercials.
As for how to eat them, well I’m not going to tell you what to do, but there are definitely some options to explore here. The first and most obvious is to just slap some butter on it and treat it like any other dinner roll. Dunk it in the juices from your meal or use it to slop up gravy. The restaurant in the commercial offers them with honey butter, which we made, and was delicious but my husband avoided the butter part entirely and just drizzled honey on them.
My godmother made this basket cloth for us. #handmadewithlove
Have you ever made dinner rolls? How’s it different to this recipe? Inquiring minds want to know. If you haven’t made them, you should make these and let me know what you think.
Yeast Rolls Recipe
(Makes 12 rolls)
Note: This recipe requires almost 3 hours due to rising time.
Ingredients:
- 1/4 cup of warm water
- 1 packet of yeast
- 1 cup milk
- 1/3 cup sugar
- 1/4 cup butter, softened (equivalent to 1/2 stick)
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 egg
- 4 and 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
- 3 tablespoons butter, melted (for brushing on rolls before baking)
Directions:
- Pour the warm water into the bowl of a stand mixer.
- Sprinkle the yeast over the water and allow it to bloom for about 5 minutes.
- While you are waiting for the yeast, microwave the milk until it’s hot.
- Add the sugar, 1/4 cup of butter, and salt to the hot milk. Stir until the butter has melted completely.
- IMPORTANT: Let your milk mixture cool to a temperature that won’t kill your yeast! (About 110 degrees F is about as hot as you want it to be.) Do not just add the hot milk to the stand mixer bowl or you will likely end up with little bricks that never rose instead of delicious rolls.
- Once your milk mixture has returned to a temperature safe for yeast, add a beaten egg to it and stir to combine.
- Add the milk mixture to the yeast mixture and start the stand mixer with the dough hook attachment. (I used speed 2 on my Kitchen Aid.)
- Add the flour to the mixer bowl and let it continue to stir the dough for about 5 minutes.
- Spray a large bowl with cooking spray.
- Transfer the dough from the stand mixer to the oiled bowl. It will be very sticky. I needed some pretty serious spatula work to get mine out of the stand mixer bowl.
- Cover the dough bowl with plastic wrap and put it in a warm place to rise for about 1 and 1/2 hours or until it has doubled in size.
- Once your dough is doubled in size, punch it down and knead it a bit to get the bigger bubbles out.
- Spray a 9 x 13 inch pan with cooking spray.
- Divide the dough into 12 equal sized balls and place them into the greased pan in a 4 by 3 pattern. I actually weighed the dough for this to make sure they were almost identical, but it’s not strictly necessary if you have a good eye.
- Let the pan with the rolls sit somewhere warm for about 45 minutes or until the rolls have doubled in size.
- Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.
- Melt the 3 tablespoons of butter and brush over each roll.
- Bake the rolls for about 20 minutes or until they are golden brown.
Adapted from: World’s Recipe List
Here are some other bangin’ breads from Dave’s Bread Corner.
These are beautiful!! I adore a good yeasty roll and these look perfect!
Thank you so much Annie!
Gah how I love homemade rolls! These look so fluffy and perfect!
I’m a sucker for homemade rolls!
I want someone to make me homemade bread! These rolls look fantastic 🙂
Hehe…I’m a lucky girl. 🙂
Those look fabulous! There’s nothing like homemade bread, not even at a restaurant 🙂
I agree! 🙂
Oh that is so fantastic Tina, you sure are lucky having your very own baker. 🙂 I love the smell of fresh made bread wafting through the house, but honestly do not have the patience to actually do it. So much respect for those that do. Great recipe, I’ll be sure to get one of my chef buddies to give it a crack.
Looooooove the smell of fresh bread baking. It’s the best. 🙂
Your yeast rolls look stunning! You did an awesome job. I know they are tons of work as I tried before… thanks for the inspiration. These would be awesome on the side of a thick and rich soup.
Thanks Bam!