I’m supposed to bring dinner rolls for Thanksgiving this year. I bake a variety of breads but I don’t have a go-to recipe for rolls. Anybody have a favorite?
People often seem to make biscuits for Thanksgiving and while I like Biscuits, a nice rusty warm dinner roll with butter is perfection.
Google Lion House Rolls. 
Most bakeries make great rolls.
In our family, cloverleaf buns are the standard for the big holidays going back quite a long time.
But if you to really wow the folk, go with popovers. Surpsingly not all that hard to make.
Growing up, the go-to solution for this was the Pillsbury crescent rolls in the cardboard cylinder.
I have made some pretty tasty dinner rolls myself (well, at least I like them), but the frozen Rhodes dinner roll dough from the supermarket is just too good to ignore, especially when I’m responsible for several other dishes as well.
My aunt who was about 100 years old made rolls so sweet and light they almost floated off the plate, I could never duplicate them in 40 years.
There are numerous recipes (basically all the same!) online for simple light delicious rolls made with flour and 7-Up. Google 7-Up Biscuits, you won’t be sorry! Bisquik, sour cream, 7-up, and melted butter, dee-licious.
How many do you want? Here’s a recipe for two dozen. Sorry for the odd amounts, this is a cutdown from the large amounts of dough I make at work.
8-1/4 teaspoons dry yeast
1/2 cup plus 1 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt
13-1/3 tablespoons warm water(194 ml)
1 egg
2 ounces buttermilk
1 teaspoon vanilla
10 teaspoons softened butter
3.75 cups flour plus 1 tablespoon
Dissolve yeast, sugar, water and salt. Let is sit for about five minutes to get bubbly, add eggs, buttermilk and vanilla, and stir together. Add butter and flour and knead until smooth and elastic. At work I use a dough hook to knead, it takes about five minutes.
Let dough sit long enough to relax, about fifteen minutes, cut into 1.5 ounce pieces and roll into balls. Grease a roll pan and place in dough balls. Allow to let rise is a warm, steamy place. At home I put rolls in an unlit oven and put in a pan of hot steamy water, reheating it as necessary. Allow to rise until nicely rounded, bake at 350 fahrenheit until lightly browned.
For a wheat roll variation replace one third of the flour with wheat flour, and add two extra teaspoons water.
I hope I’ve suffieciently screwed up these instructions, any questions ask.
Buttered rosemary rolls are a winner in my house. I do a no knead overnight bread. My improvement on the recipe is to not only butter the pan but also grind some Himalayan sea salt on the buttered pan, in addition to salting on top.
Here’s my recipe, and when I go to the extended family Thanksgiving, they get raves and requests for recipes and such. Amounts are approximate.
This recipe is fascinating–especially the vanilla and buttermilk. Do you serve these with savory meals?
Also, nearly 3 Tbsp yeast for 4 cups flour seems like a huge amount to me. I’d worry about overproofing. Is the idea just that you jump-start the baking and don’t need to do much rising this way?
Parker House Rolls
My absolute favourite rolls for dinner are Laugenbrötchen (“lye breadrolls”, or better known as pretzel buns). I use a recipe basically the same asthis one - no fear, it doesn’t actually use lye, just baking soda.
What kind of flour do you use for the normal variation, if not wheat flour?
“Wheat flour” means “whole wheat flour” here, I think :).
Yes, I should have been clear about that.
I use half hard fllour, and half general purpose flour. For the wheat one third of the weight is whole wheat flour, the rest general purpose.
Left Hand, the yeast does sound high but it’s correct. there is an element of jumpstarting, since I’m doing this for work, but it also helps “work” the dough and it’s quite soft. I use is for dinner rolls, our hamburger buns, breadsticks, and so on. It’s very tolerant.
Cool–thanks for the answers! I’m gonna try those rolls sometime.
(The dill rolls were, as always, a hit.)