These Soft and Fluffy Dinner Rolls Are Just Right for Every Holiday Meal (2024)

FAQs

Where did soft dinner rolls come from? ›

The first comes from the Parker House Hotel that opened in Boston in 1854. Allegedly, a rankled baker tossed a batch of unfinished rolls into the oven. They came out with a distinct shape, a light interior, and a buttery exterior.

Soft rolls and hard rolls are yeast breads, but quick breads are chemically raised doughs (with baking powder or baking soda). Soft rolls would be dinner rolls or sandwich buns which are usually enriched with dairy, butter or some other fat, and normally are sweetened to some degree.

While dinner rolls to a German or Italian mind might be crusty, have a chewy or dense texture, and be made with a flour other than white wheat, to an English-speaking mind, classic dinner rolls are puffy, have a soft crust and a soft crumb, a subtle, buttery flavour, and are made from white bread or all-purpose flour.

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.

If your bread is under proofed, it means there's not enough air in the dough. The yeast/sourdough in your dough has not had an adequate amount of time to produce the carbon dioxide that creates a rise in your bread. This results in bread that is dense and less airy.

Finger roll – soft roll about three times longer than it is wide. French roll – generic term for the bread roll. Also a sweeter, softer roll with milk added to the dough. Fritter is a stuffed bread roll.

The dinner roll is a type of bread prepared into a small round loaf often served as a side to a meal. Dating back to ancient times, dinner rolls are named for their original purpose as an easily passed dinner food.

Too much flour, or not the right kind, could be to blame. Dough made only from flour with a high or even average amount of protein (like bread flour or all-purpose flour) can become tough from overmixing. Protein gives bread structure in the form of gluten—the more you mix and move the dough, the more gluten you get.

"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.

Dinner rolls are sometimes made from a fortified dough, meaning it has fat added in the form of milk, dried milk or butter. The fat makes the crumb softer and more tender.

Are Hawaiian rolls same as dinner rolls? ›

If you want to understand Hawaiian regional cuisine, you have to understand Hawaiian rolls, a recent though now iconic part of the islands' edible canon. At their core, they're sweet, fluffy dinner rolls, like the love child of a chiffon cake and a Martin's potato roll.

This could be a barm cake, bread-cake, bap, batch, bun, buttery, muffin, cob, oven bottom, roll or stotty. To add to the confusion, some names mean more than one thing. In the area north of Manchester, bread rolls are called 'teacakes'.

Classic dinner rolls fill you up but don't provide much nutrition, and many aren't made with the highest-quality ingredients. Thankfully, newer dinner roll options are on the market that have an impressive ingredient list and provide more nutrients than what you may find in an OG version.

Mistake to Avoid #4: Pale, Dry Rolls

Did everything right but your rolls look dull? You may have forgotten the egg wash. Egg wash gives baked goods a golden shine and can also help toppings to adhere.

If your dinner rolls aren't fluffy it could be because of one of two reasons. 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.

It is possible the dough was not kneaded long enough. It takes time for gluten to develop fully. Bread dough should be kneaded 4 to 10 minutes. When you have kneaded the dough enough, it will be smooth and elastic, and tacky rather than sticky.

Don't over flour the dough. Knead for 5-6 minutes until the dough is soft and smooth. Let the dough rise in a warm spot until doubled, about an hour or so. (I usually let the dough rise right in the mixing bowl, but you can transfer to a lightly greased bowl and cover.)