Easy Squash Dinner Rolls Recipe - Alyona’s Cooking (2024)

FAQs

Why are my homemade dinner rolls hard? ›

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.

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.

To make, simply divide your dinner roll dough into however many pieces you desire. Then roll each portion on your work surface until smooth and round. Then let the buns proof before baking.

Potato Flakes or Potato Water

Starch helps the dough by trapping the gas from the yeast in the dough and makes the bubbles stronger. This helps the bread to rise and be lighter and fluffier. If you are boiling potatoes, you can use the unsalted water in place of the water in your bread recipe to help out the yeast.

Add Milk

To make your bread soft and fluffy, another trick used by commercial bakers is replacing water with milk. Milk has fats which make bread softer.

Active dry yeast and instant yeast can generally be used interchangeably, one-for-one (although active dry yeast may be slower to rise). So if a recipe calls for instant yeast and you use active dry yeast instead, you may want to consider adding an extra 10 to 15 minutes for the rise time.

Don't rush the rising time.

For flavor and texture, these fluffy dinner rolls need an initial rise and then a second proof after they're shaped. This ensures that your rolls are light and fluffy and not dense bricks.

You can also use all-purpose in many bun or roll recipes, which tend to have lower hydration and rely less on strong gluten and more on butter and sugar for texture. (Though bread flour can still give you a fluffier, almost cotton-candy-like texture in most buns and rolls.)

Is it better to use an egg wash or butter on your pie crust? We are Team Egg Wash (or Cream Wash). While melted butter adds more flavor than the washes, it is less effective in look; it gives a speckled appearance to pastry.

Whole Milk: For a crispy crust with a matte appearance, use just milk. Many biscuits and dinner rolls are brushed with milk or buttermilk for a finishing touch. Heavy Cream: For a little more shine than an all-milk wash, but not as much as an egg wash, use heavy cream or half-and-half.

Should I egg wash my homemade bread? ›

There are no “shoulds” with using egg washes. Use them if you wish or not. The shiny surface an egg (or egg white or yolk) mixed with a little water does give a very nice appearance to loaves and rolls as Effie May stated. They can also be used to help a sprinkle of sesame seeds or other toppings stay on the crust.

Cast iron can be used on the stove top or directly in the oven. If you don't have a large 11 inch cast iron pan, you can use a glass baking dish sprayed with nonstick spray. A 9×13 size would work well. It's best to have the rolls all touching each other when you arrange them in the pan, and I'll tell you why…

What is the difference between Texas Size rolls and Dinner Rolls? Texas Size rolls are 50% larger than our Dinner Rolls. The only difference is the roll size.

Use a thermometer (I like the Thermapen) to assess the doneness of pan breads, freeform loaves, and soft rolls. A temperature of 190°F at the center will yield bread that's fully baked (soft and moist) but not over-baked (tough and dry).

Different Flours

The main ingredient is flour in bread making and it's not a surprise to find that the incorrect kind can make your bread heavy and dense. For baking light and fluffy bread, it is necessary to choose flour that has high levels of protein.

Does Rising Bread Affect Its Texture? For a fluffy bread texture, the key is to let the bread rise long enough.

Avoid adding too much extra flour to the dough.

These ingredients slow down gluten development and can make the dough a little sticky. Your instinct might be to add extra flour; however, any extra flour will create a denser, tougher roll instead of the light, fluffy, soft dinner roll we want.

“The first thing that springs to mind,” Bertinet says, “is that your dough is probably too cold.” Or, put another way, the water you're using isn't warm enough. “It's vital you give the yeast a helping hand, otherwise it'll just slumber lazily,” he says, adding that your water/ flour/salt/yeast ratio is also crucial.