Well, this won’t happen often at my house, but here’s a recipe for an all white flour dinner roll. Having said that, they are killer dinner rolls! Especially right out of the oven. With butter. Or as sandwich. Or leftovers. I think you get it.
Originally, many years ago, I pulled my dinner roll recipe from Peter Reinhart’s classic book, The Bread Baker’s Apprentice. In his book, there are three variations of white bread that can be used as a recipe for dinner rolls. I used variation #2 as it skipped powdered milk, unlike his other options, which is not an ingredient I’m interested in having on hand.
But in the intervening years I have changed the recipe a bit, and this newest iteration comes from Joshua Weismann, who measures everything out in grams, so I have done the same and have updated the measurements in the recipe below from cups and teaspoons to grams.
This is not his most famous dinner roll recipe, the Japanese milk version, but rather the bun he uses for his rendition of the Wendy’s spicy chicken sandwich.
Like Peter, he calls for a few ingredients that I wouldn’t normally have on hand, but that I might find a bit less objectionable, such as using bread machine yeast instead of the normal yeast I keep in my fridge. And also amylase.
I haven’t tried it yet, but my guess is that the rolls would turn out quite fine using “normal” yeast and skipping the amylase.
These rolls actually come together pretty quickly, all things considered, and can be started only a few hours before you want to eat them. Give yourself about 15-30 minutes to get the dough together, another hour to let it rise in a bowl, another hour to split into individual rolls and rise again in the pan and then only 15-20 minutes to cook in the oven.
Once you have the individual dough balls cut on your counter, cup your hand over one at a time, and move your hand in a circular motion, with the dough in the palm of your hand and your fingers on the counter top. If you’ve been preparing your bread on the same counter that you’re rolling on, it should be just sticky enough that the dinner rolls won’t slide on the counter, but instead will roll up into a tight little ball inside your cupped hand.
After that, there’s not a lot to do except apply an egg wash to each roll, let them rise for another 45 minutes to an hour and then bake them off. And when these guys hit the oven, they will go into overdrive with an extra rise. Normally, my rolls are not touching each other when I start to bake them, but by the time they’ve been in the over a few minutes, they’ve all grown into each other and look beautiful!
Light and Fluffy Dinner Rolls
Ingredients
- 550 grams bread flour about 3 1/2 cups
- 8 grams sea salt
- 50 grams sugar
- 10 grams yeast – preferably bread machine yeast
- 4 grams amylase optional – it's a dough conditioner
- 1 lg egg
- 1 egg yolk
- 1/2 cup whole milk
- 1/2 cup water
- 55 grams unsalted butter
Egg Wash For Rolls Before Baking
- 1 egg
- small splash of water
Melted Butter To Finish Rolls
- 1-2 tablespoons butter melted
- flaky salt
Instructions
- Combine milk and water and microwave for 30-60 seconds to warm up, but not exceed 100 degrees, not looking to boil
- Combine all of the dry ingredients in the bowl of a stand mixer
- Add the water/milk combo to the mixing bowl with the dry ingredients, add the egg and egg yolk and using a dough hook, thoroughly knead until smooth and elastic – will be quite sticky, may want to add just a pinch or two more flour to make it more manageable
- Turn dough out of the mixing bowl and into a lightly oiled bowl to double in size, roughly 1 hour
- Turn dough out of bowl and split an shape into individual rolls
- Place rolls into a lightly greased pan with enough room in between each roll to allow them to grow into each other
- Pre-heat oven to 375 degrees
- Brush with egg wash, cover loosely with a damp cloth and let rise for another 45-60 minutes
- Place rolls into oven and bake for approximately 20 minutes, until browned to your satisfaction
- Brush with melted butter and add flaky salt to the top of each roll
- Pull apart and serve warm
Ever proof these in the fridge overnight? I was thinking about starting on these tonight?
I have his book and opened it up for the first time in years.
I would imagine that there is a way to start one night and end up with rolls the next, but I’ve never tried it. My guess would be to either do a pre-mixture of some of the water, yeast and flour, like an overnight sponge, and then finish it up the next day. Or I would mix all of the ingredients together, and instead of letting rise on the counter, I would let it rise in the fridge overnight, making sure to check it once or twice before going to bed to make sure it doesn’t over-rise and run away on you, and then proceed as normal the next day, making sure to give yourself some time for it to come back up to temperature so that they will rise when they hit the oven.
Greetings! May I use all-purpose flour with this recipe? Some one in this house only eats all-purpose. Thank you!
I would imagine All Purpose flour would work just fine!