Perfect Dinner Rolls | Recipe from Your Homebased Mom (2024)

FAQs

Why are my homemade dinner rolls dry? ›

Either, you added too much flour or you possibly used all bread flour. Alternately, not giving your dinner rolls enough time to proof and get puffy before baking could yield dense rolls. What is this?

Let the rolls cool completely on a cooling rack. Always remove rolls from the pan immediately after baking to prevent moisture buildup that can cause sogginess. Once cooled, place in an air tight container or ziplock bag.

Make and bake your homemade bread, quick bread, or rolls and freeze to keep them fresh until you're ready to serve (this works great for the holidays). Wrap cooled bread (sliced or whole) or rolls in foil; place in resealable plastic freezer bags or freezer containers. Freeze up to 3 months.

Add Sugar

Adding sugar weakens the gluten structure, absorbs water, and eventually makes the bread lighter and softer. As a result, sugar improves the bread's taste, structure and texture. Yeast also eats up sugar to produce carbon dioxide, which raises the dough and makes bread fluffy.

Shape and Rise

Each dough ball will weigh right around 3 ounces, give or take. Space them a little bit apart in the baking pan and let them rise until very puffy and the sides are touching. Don't skimp on the rising! If they don't rise long enough, they won't reach their fluff-fluffy potential.

Too much flour results in a dry, crumbly dough that's unpleasant and difficult to work with. It doesn't stick to itself and tends to fall apart when kneaded.

Use fresh herbs. Brush melted butter onto your dinner rolls and add your choice of fresh herbs—I like fresh thyme leaves. Bake until the herbs and rolls are toasted, then sprinkle on some flaky sea salt.

Butter basting: Rolls can be brushed with butter before, during, or after baking. While it doesn't brown the surface as much as egg wash will, it does promote browning and adds a lot of flavor.

Why do my homemade rolls have no taste? ›

Flat flavor in bread is almost always because of not enough salt. I agree with you that you don't have enough. About 2% of the flour weight. In your recipe with 5 cups of flour (600g) that would be just over 2tsp of table salt (12g).

If you're only a day or two away from your party, you can also just refrigerate either the dough or the shaped rolls — they'll keep just fine without even needing to go to the freezer. Whichever method you end up using, three days in the fridge or a month in the freezer is about the maximum that I recommend.

While it's safe to keep many baked goods at room temperature, it depends on the item and should be taken on a case-by-case basis. For instance, breads and rolls can last up to four days at room temperature, but any bread with meat or hard-boiled eggs should be refrigerated within two hours, according to the USDA.

But I'm going to let you in on a baker's secret: Dinner rolls—even if the dough has yeast—are one of the easiest breads to make, freeze, and bake later. Dinner rolls can either be frozen as unbaked balls of dough, or you can bake, cool, and then freeze them to reheat later.

The primary reason for this is that the bread is still baking inside. The crust has trapped enough steam inside the loaf to continue working its magic and create a great crumb. If you let that steam out too soon, the entire loaf will be drier.

Fats keep your bread moist. If your loaf was too dry, try adding a tablespoon or two more oil next time you make it. Likewise, water does more than hydrate your dough. It helps yeast do its thing, activates gluten and determines the volume of your loaf—all crucial for the right results.

“My mum told me a trick her mum used to do back in the day, and it really works.” As well as running it under the tap, you could also put a damp tea towel over your roll for a bit before popping it in the oven, or simply just wet your hands and rub them over the roll.