Easy Dinner Rolls Recipe (2024)

FAQs

Why did my dinner rolls turn out dense? ›

There may be several reasons for a dense, cake like texture in bread. It may indicate the kneading wasn't enough for the gluten to develop properly, or the dough was proved for too short a time or the dough may have been too dry. It is also worth checking the flour you used.

The main difference is that the bread rolls are typically rounder, softer, and smaller.

I suggest using parchment paper to line the baking dish to ensure that the rolls are easy to remove from the pan to serve. Once the homemade dinner rolls are formed and placed in the baking sheet, let them rise again until they are doubled in size (30-60 minutes).

Add Milk

To make your bread soft and fluffy, another trick used by commercial bakers is replacing water with milk. Milk has fats which make bread softer.

Potato Flakes or Potato Water

Starch helps the dough by trapping the gas from the yeast in the dough and makes the bubbles stronger. This helps the bread to rise and be lighter and fluffier. If you are boiling potatoes, you can use the unsalted water in place of the water in your bread recipe to help out the yeast.

You can also use all-purpose in many bun or roll recipes, which tend to have lower hydration and rely less on strong gluten and more on butter and sugar for texture. (Though bread flour can still give you a fluffier, almost cotton-candy-like texture in most buns and rolls.)

Does Rising Bread Affect Its Texture? For a fluffy bread texture, the key is to let the bread rise long enough.

Too much extra flour worked into the dough while folding and/or shaping can cause dense bread. Over mixing can cause a dense loaf by the weakening and breakdown of the gluten (not likely to happen if you fold dough or hand knead). The flour you used is a whole grain with coarse bits of bran and grain in it.

Scientists reveal the most popular terms across the UK - with 'bun' the favourite of the North East, 'bap' preferred in Wales and 'cob' ruling in the East Midlands - but 'bread roll' the overall champion.

"Roll" crops up everywhere, but it's most common in the south, with "bun", which also shows up throughout the country, being the favoured word in the North East. "Barm" is very localised to the Manchester area, and "batch" is incredibly specific: this is used just by residents of Liverpool and Coventry.

What are brioche dinner rolls? ›

Brioche rolls and regular rolls are different in that brioche rolls require more eggs and butter in their recipe than regular rolls. Although both brioche rolls and regular rolls contain eggs and butter, the fact that brioche rolls contain more of these ingredients means that these rolls are higher in fat content.

If you don't have a large 11 inch cast iron pan, you can use a glass baking dish sprayed with nonstick spray. A 9×13 size would work well. It's best to have the rolls all touching each other when you arrange them in the pan, and I'll tell you why…

It does need to be said that while parchment paper is heat-resistant, it is not flame-retardant. Which is why you should never let any parchment paper (including ours) come in contact with an electric heating element or be exposed to a direct flame.

For most uniformly shaped pull-apart rolls, bake them in a round or rectangular pan. For non-pull-apart perfect spheres, bake rolls free-form. Though in the end, how much difference does it really make – so long as there are hot rolls, brushed with butter, on the table when dinner is ready?

The baking process produces a number of different gases, such as carbon dioxide, water in the form of steam, ethanol vapors and nitrogen. The gluten network traps these gases and the dough expands like a balloon. If the gluten network is too strong, the gases will not produce enough pressure to make the dough rise.

It's a common mistake, especially for newer bakers. When there's too much flour and not enough liquid, the whole rising process is thrown off. The dryness of the dough will prevent the yeast or another rising agent from activating properly, leading to a stunted rise (or it may not rise at all).