I’ve never been able to make a pretty dinner roll.  I can remember my mom making rolls; perfectly round and golden.  When I try they look lumpy and ugly (though they taste fine).  For Thanksgiving this year I tried a new recipe and, for the first time, served beautiful rolls.

Brenna helped me make these as it involved rolling the dough into balls.  Fun!

The recipe came from the April 2009 Cuisine at Home magazine.

Recipe makes 12 rolls.  Warning: this is time consuming! Takes about 4 hours; 3 1/2 of it is rising time.

Ingredients

2/3 c whole milk
1/2 stick unsalted butter, diced
1/4 c sugar
1 pkg active dry yeast (2 1/4 tsp)
2 T unsalted butter, softened
3 c all-purpose flour
1 t table salt
1 egg, beaten
1 egg yolk, beaten

Directions

Heat milk in a small saucepan to 180° over mdium heat.  Add 1/2 stick butter and sugar; stir to dissolve sugar.  Cool mixture to 110°.  Stir in yeast.  Let rest in a warm place until it swells and becomes bubbly; about 10 minutes.

Grease inside of a bowl and a muffin tin with 2 T softened butter.

Whisk together flour and salt in the bowl of a stand mixer.  Add yeast mixture, egg and egg yolk.

Knead mixture with a dough hook on medium speed until dough forms a ball and pulls away from the bowl; about 6-8 minutes.  Add 1 T flour at a time if necessary.  Place dough in buttered bowl and let rise until doubled in size; about 2 hours.

Divide dough into 36 equal portions.  Shape portions into balls; place 3 each into each well of muffin tin.  Cover dough with plastic wrap. (Dough may be refrigerated overnight at this point.)  Let rise until doubled in size; about 1 1/2 hours (2 1/2 hours if dough was chilled).

Preheat oven to 375° with rack in lower third of oven.

Bake rolls until light brown; about 10 minutes.  Cool slightly in pan before removing.

Handy tip: my kitchen tends to be cool.  I heat my oven on a low setting while I mix the dough and turn it off when it becomes warm.  I place my dough, covered, in here to rise.  Don’t make the oven too warm.