Right-Away Dinner Rolls

 

Can you imagine...fresh, warm, fluffy, and supremely delicious homemade dinner rolls in under forty five minutes or so?  Start to finish?  Using yeast?  No?  Well I can and I am here to tell you, they are called Right-Away Dinner Rolls.

Yes.  Seriously.  You can.  And you will with this recipe.

There are many times when, despite planning out dinners for a week, ok, a month, Mike upends my best laid plans and tosses in a "hey let's make this tonight."  Usually that involves grilling and that's excellent.

This time though, we were roaming the 'burbs, picking up turkey at our favorite turkey spot when he stated, I got extras, let's make turkey tonight.  Hm, twist my arm.

It's one meal where Mike must have rolls.  Must.  Hey, we all have our food quirks, right?  His is rolls with turkey, or uh, gravy.  And upon returning home, I realized we had no rolls.  Yikes.  Roll emergency.

Quickly I dove into my Paprika collection and found this recipe in my stash.  Given I had eye-popping success with the last Red Star Yeast recipe I had tried and this one claimed fast, warm, delicious, pillowy rolls in a snap, I thought, hey, on it.

And now we have The Favorite roll recipe, Right-Away Dinner Rolls.

Be forewarned, this recipe makes twelve baseball sized rolls as written.  Yeah!  They're big!  And for us two people, that's a bunch!  But, they freeze terrifically so bake these, stash them in the freezer for any roll emergency at hand.

Trust me, do that because these are that good, you'll want them around at a moment's notice.

I mean, they're great on their own with dinner.  Oorrr, use them for sandwiches (ahhh yess).

Yeah sorry, hang on, I've gotta prattle on about how nifty these rolls are....They're so good that after I had made them, I rearranged my entire week's dinner meal plan around them. 

Yep.  That much of a winner.

heh heh, such the winner (last one, I promise!) that these are already on the menu plan for Thanksgiving since they were that bang-on perfect with the aforementioned turkey, er, gravy.

As, every year for Thanksgiving, Mike insists on those brown and serve type rolls but this year, he wants these.  At our early Thanksgiving with my parents, my mom proclaimed, "these are the best rolls I have ever had!"  Ding ding ding, yay!

I will say they are not like whisper, paper thin layers, melt away light and fluffy; they are definitely light and fluffy albeit a bit sturdier?, doughier?, beefier? (bad adjectives) due to the yeast quantity.  Who cares.  They rock.

Ok!  Enough.  Let's bake Right-Away Dinner Rolls.  And don't panic about yeast, these are so not complicated nor scary.  I will never steer you yeast-ily wrong!

A note on the yeast?  While I haven't tested this with instant yeast, you can use either that or active dry. 

Dump your bread flour into the bowl of your stand mixer* with a dough hook* and go gather everything else. 

Sprinkle in the salt, toss that around a bit.  If you're using instant yeast, you can add it to the bowl now too.

Measure out the milk in a large measuring cup* then drop in the half stick of butter and the sugar.  Pop that in the microwave and warm it all up to melt the butter, heating to that sweet spot of 110° to 115°.  Use your kitchen thermometer!*  I tend to go the warmer end, myself.

If you're going active dry yeast, sprinkle that on the warmed milk stuff and give it a moment to get bubbly and foamy.

No worries if all the yeast isn't moistened.

All right!  Once that's good to go, just pour it into the mixer and flip that mixer onto stir.

When things come together enough, pop the speed up a notch or two, not too far and give that a whirl for a few minutes until everything is together, soft, is a bit elastic, and the dough cleaned itself off the bowl.  So handy, having the dough clean for you!

Mmk, grab a 9x13 baking pan,* preferably a metal one* as it conducts heat better and give that a light grease.

Grab your kitchen scale* (if I haven't encouraged you enough to get one, here's my reminder; get one, it's so very helpful), divide the dough into twelve even blobs.  You don't have to weigh them but it's a good idea so they bake evenly and folks aren't arguing over the bigger rolls.

Tip:  weigh the whole blob of dough in grams, then math it, dividing the total by twelve, piece of cake.

Gently roll the dough into balls, tucking the raggedy ends up underneath then set the balls in the pan evenly spaced.

Cover that pan up, preheat the oven, and come back in thirty minutes to test. 

Give a roll a quick poke test and if the dough doesn't bounce back, let's bake, otherwise give it a few more minutes.

You can see my poke test there by the hot pink arrow.

Pop those rolls into the oven, pace around anxiously, and enjoy the heady scent of fresh baked bread enveloping your kitchen.

They're ready?!  Ok! 

They're nicely golden on top when they are so yank them out of the oven, generously slather them with the melted butter with a pastry brush,* and if you want, sprinkle with a dash of salt.  Or another seasoning like everything bagel or whatever you like.

Now eat.  Eat eat eat. 

Good heavens.

Right-Away Dinner Rolls, my friends.  So good.  So so sooo good.  So!  mmmph, yum.

Enjoy!

*The stand mixer, dough hook, measuring cups, thermometers, baking pans, metal baking pans, kitchen scales, and pastry brushes are Amazon affiliate links.  Happy baking, thanks!  Please see the "info" tab for more, well, info.