Homemade Dinner Rolls

Dinner rolls don’t get any better when they are homemade…

I love baking, however baking breads, rolls etc isn’t my thing as something or the other would go wrong while making them. So I usually depend on store bought rolls and breads, the easiest and the safest way. However, last week I somehow got the urge for baking dinner rolls from scratch. I had no other choice but bake it. I didn’t have any family recipes for making dinner rolls, so obviously had to surf the internet and bumped into a good recipe at Martha Stewart’s website. I immediately started making it, it was quite easy to make. Only thing I had to do was knead the dough for 5-10 minutes. Then I had to keep the dough aside for 3 hours to let it rise. Baked it for 20 minutes, I felt so impatient and just wanted the rolls to come out of the oven to have a bite of it. I even couldn’t wait for it to cool down, I greedily tore one of the hot rolls and put it in my mouth. I did burn my mouth but when I chewed down the soft rolls which tasted better than the store bought ones, I totally forgot about the burn and I was seen in the ninth cloud.

One of the best dinner rolls I’ve ever tasted and it’s fresh and homemade. So, what are you waiting for? Get in to your kitchen and have fun kneading and baking!

Homemade Dinner Rolls:

Makes: 13

Ingredients:

• Warm water- 1/8 cup
• Active dry yeast- 1 packet, 1/4 ounce each
• Warm milk, skim or whole- 3/4 cup
• Unsalted butter, melted- 1/4 cup (half of a stick) and more for greasing the pans.
• Sugar- 1/8 cup
• Salt- 1tsp
• Eggs- 2; 1 for making the dough and 1 for egg wash
• All purpose flour- 3 1/4 cups and more for work surface for kneading

Instruction

• In a small bowl, place the warm water and sprinkle the yeast over it. Let stand for 5 minutes.
• In a large bowl, whisk together milk, melted butter, sugar, salt and 1 egg.
• Whisk in the yeast into the above mixture.
• Add 3 1/4 cups of all purpose flour, one cup at a time and combine using a wooden spoon, until it gets soft.
• Flour a wooden board or any work surface and place the dough on it.
• Knead the dough until it gets smooth and elastic, for about 5-10 minutes.
• Grease the inside of a large bowl with butter, place the dough into the bowl.

• Spread little butter over the dough and cover the bowl with plastic wrap.
• Let the bowl stand in a warm place or over the stove for about 1 1/4 hours until the dough has doubled in size.

• Grease 2 baking sheets or pans with little butter.
• Divide the dough in half.
• Make small balls out of the dough and place the balls on the greased baking sheet or pan.

• Don’t over crowd while placing on the baking sheet.
• Cover the baking sheets or pans with a plastic wrap and let stand for 1 1/4 hours more for the second rising of the dough.
• Preheat the oven to 375 F.
• In a small bowl, whisk 1 egg and keep aside.
• Using a pastry brush, brush the top of the unbaked rolls with whisked egg.

• Bake the rolls, keeping it on the middle rack of the oven for 20 minutes until golden brown.
• After 15 minutes of baking, transfer the baking sheets or pans to the upper rack and bake for another 5 more minutes.
• Let the rolls cool down for 10 minutes before serving.

Tips:

• For extra flavor, you could add sesame seeds or your favorite herbs or even ground cinnamon to the dough.
• You could make the dough ahead of time and freeze it, after the initial rising of the dough, wrap the dough balls with plastic wrap and you could freeze it for a month.
• Before baking the frozen dough balls, let it stand for 3-4 hours in a warm spot and then bake it at 375 F.