Easy Homemade Dinner Rolls Recipe

Before you bust out your mixer and grab your yeast, read the simple tips and tricks below for creating perfectly soft and fluffy butter dinner rolls every single time!

These one-hour dinner rolls rely on one quick rise versus standard yeast rolls that require two longer rises! Therefore, where you place the dough to rise is important!

Typically, the kitchen counter is a fine place to let dough rise, however you will need to speed up the rising process by placing the rolls in the warm oven. To quickly rise dough, preheat the oven to 200 degrees Fahrenheit and then immediately turn the oven off. Cut the dough, shape it into balls and transfer the dough balls to your baking pan. Next, place the pan in the warm oven. The slightly warm oven speeds up the yeast activity, helping your dough balls rise very quickly! Tip: Make sure you preheat your oven and turn it off before you start cutting the dinner roll dough. You don’t want your oven to be too hot when rising your dough!

Cutting your dough for dinner rolls is super simple! You don’t need to worry about them being perfect! (If you’re a perfectionist, see below for getting them equal in size!)

• Flour work surface: Lightly flour your work surface and place your dough on top. Sprinkle a little bit of flour evenly over the surface of the dough.
• Shape it into a rectangle: Gently roll and pat the dough into a rectangle.
• Cut dough: Use a pastry scraper or sharp paring knife to cut the dough into 12-15 evenly sized pieces.

Want to ensure all your buttery dinner rolls are uniform and equal in size? Use a kitchen scale! To make uniform rolls equal in size, weigh the entire ball of dough using a kitchen scale. Next, divide that weight by 12 or 15 – depending upon how big you want your rolls. That number is your target weight for each roll.

When it comes to shaping dough into homemade dinner rolls, the possibilities are pretty endless! You can twist and turn the dough into cloverleaves, knots and crescent shapes to name a few. However, today we are going to stick to the basic round shape because it’s straightforward and classic!

1. Divide the dough: Divide the dough into 12-15 even pieces.
2. Shape: Lightly flour your hands. Working with one piece at a time, shape each piece into a ball by stretching the top and pulling down the sides of the dough.
3. Seal: Pinch the bottom of the ball to seal the roll, creating a smooth top to the dough.
4. Place in pan: Add the rolls to a lightly greased baking pan, arranging them with the sealed side down.

Tip: Stretching the dough helps the rolls hold up to the expansion that occurs during baking, while sealing the bottom prevents the rolls from opening up and becoming doughy on the bottom.

There are two main categories of yeast – wet yeast and dry yeast. Wet yeast is mainly used by professionals, so we are going to focus on dry yeast – which is what you need to use when making homemade dinner rolls.

There are two types of dry yeast: active-dry yeast and instant yeast (also known as rapid rise). You can use either type of dry yeast to make One Hour Dinner Rolls; however, this recipe focuses on using active-dry yeast.

Active-dry yeast is made of bigger size granules and needs to be “proofed” or activated before using. To proof active-dry yeast, you simply add it to a mixture of warm milk, sugar and oil, and let it sit for 5-10 minutes until the mixture is frothy and very bubbly.

On the other hand, instant yeast can be added directly to the dry ingredients and doesn’t require any proofing.

Both types of dry yeast are sold in little individual packets or loose in a jar. You can find dry yeast in the baking section of most major grocery stores. Dry yeast is perishable, so once you open the package of yeast, you must place it in an airtight container and store it in the refrigerator (for up to 4 months) or freezer (for up to 6 months).

One of the easiest ways to ruin your dinner rolls is to improperly measure your flour! But thankfully, accurately measuring flour is easy to do and it will help you avoid the most basic baking error! If you are using a kitchen scale, 1 cup of flour equals 125 grams.

1. Fluff: Use a spoon or fork to stir the flour in its container. Don’t skip this step – flour will settle and become compact upon sitting.
2. Spoon: Use a large spoon to spoon the flour from the container and into your measuring cup, making sure the flour is lightly overflowing the cup.
3. Level: Use the back, straightedge of a knife to level off the flour. Repeat leveling off the surface of the flour until it’s smooth across the top of the measuring cup.

• Sifting: Never sift your flour unless the recipe calls for it. You don’t need to sift the flour for this dinner roll recipe!
• Packing: Never dip your measuring cup into the flour container! Dipping the measuring cup right into the container will result in packing the flour and you will end up with significantly more flour than you need!

This homemade dinner rolls recipe is very straightforward with one exception – the precise amount of flour you need to use will depend upon two factors: accurate measurement and the humidity in your environment. When making this recipe, it’s best to tell if you’ve added enough flour by touching and feeling the dough!

Start with the minimum amount of flour – 3 cups. Use the stand mixer to knead the dough until it looks ropey and barely pulls away from the sides of your mixing bowl. You want the dinner roll dough to be wet enough that it holds together, but not so sticky that it sticks to everything! The dough should be smooth, elastic and ever-so-slightly sticky. If the yeast dough is extremely sticky and clinging to the sides of the bowl, add more flour, one tablespoon at a time, until it just clears the sides of the bowl and is soft to the touch.

There is nothing more disappointing than dense, heavy dinner rolls! Below are some of the factors and mistakes that contribute to your homemade rolls being dense.

• Your yeast was expired. If the yeast doesn’t bubble and froth during foaming, your yeast is dead and your rolls will never rise. Dead yeast will cause your homemade rolls to be more like hockey pucks than dinner rolls.
• Too much flour. When making your dough, start with 3 cups of flour! If your dough is still very sticky, add more flour one tablespoon at a time! Make sure you are only adding a little bit of flour at a time! Adding too much flour will cause your rolls to be less fluffy.
• You kneaded the dough too much or too little. Making bread dough is straightforward and finicky all at the same time. You want to knead the dough long enough to develop a strong gluten network, which makes your rolls delightfully chewy. However, you don’t want to knead the dough so long that you develop too much gluten, which will result in rock-hard rolls! After proper kneading your dough should feel soft and spring back immediately when you lightly press it with your finger. If it doesn’t spring back, the dough needs more kneading. If your dough feels tight or tough, then you have over kneaded your dough. Take-away: Knead the dough until it’s soft to the touch.
• You didn’t let it rise! Once you have properly kneaded your dough, you need to let it rise until it’s puffy and almost double in size. Rising improves the flavor and creates a structure within the rolls which produces fluffy texture!

Absolutely! However, since these are quick-rise 1-hour dinner rolls they aren’t as flexible in the make ahead process as traditional rolls. Meaning, you can’t start, stop and pick up again whenever you want to when making the dough – but, the dough doesn’t require resting or multiple rises, so it’s a very quick process!

The best way to make this dinner rolls recipe ahead: Don’t. Instead, fully bake the rolls and store them in the freezer! Now, all you need to do to enjoy those buttery soft dinner rolls is pull them out of the freezer the night before, and let them thaw in the refrigerator. Then, quickly warm them before serving! Bonus, if you forget to thaw the yeast rolls, don’t worry – you can’t reheat them straight from the freezer! (See the tips below for freezing and warming rolls!)