I truly hate purchasing buns, rolls and bread from the store. I am on a quest to find a good recipe that is delicious and easy. I found some but did not like the texture. I found this recipe from
Cooking Classy. It is great as a dinner roll, as a hamburger bun and as a hotdog bun. I do plan to play around with this recipe to create a good one for sandwiches and that has some whole wheat in it. I hope you enjoy it as much as my family does.
Big Soft and Fluffy One-Hour Dinner Rolls
Ingredients:
3 3/4 - 4 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 Tbsp rapid rise yeast
1 1/2 tsp salt
3/4 cup cool water
2/3 cup milk
4 Tbsp unsalted butter, diced into 1 Tbsp pieces, plus more for tops
1 1/2 tsp lemon juice
Directions:
Preheat oven to 180 degrees. In the bowl of an electric stand mixer whisk together 4 cups flour, sugar, yeast and salt.
To a medium bowl add water, milk and butter and heat in microwave on HIGH power until it reaches 115 degrees on a thermometer, about 1 minute 15 seconds. Stir to partially melt butter (you just want to make sure it's softened through).
Pour milk mixture into dry mixture in bowl of electric stand mixer along with lemon juice. Set mixer with a hook attachment then set mixer on low speed and gradually increase to medium-low, knead about 3 - 4 minutes until smooth and elastic while adding additional flour as necessary (dough should be lightly sticky but manageable).
Cover bowl tightly with plastic wrap and rest 5 minutes. Meanwhile butter a 13 by 9-inch baking dish.
Drop dough onto a lightly floured surface. Shape into an evenly level square, about 9 by 9-inches. Cut into 16 equal portions (don't have to be exact). Shape dough into 15 balls, while using excess dough from the 16th portion to add to smaller rounds as needed, and place shaped dough portions into prepared baking dish. If you are making it into buns, only cut into 8 pieces and shape into hamburger buns or hotdog buns. Do not press them down too much so they will rise, and not touching.
Dampen hands with water and brush tops of dough with the water (just so they don't dry while rising in oven). Transfer to oven, close oven and turn oven off, allow rolls to rise 20 minutes (don't open oven door). Remove from oven and preheat oven to 375 degrees (this should take about 5 minutes, so just allow rolls to rest on counter while oven preheats).
Bake in preheated oven 14 - 16 minutes until tops are golden brown. Remove from oven and run the top of a stick of butter along tops of rolls just to coat. Serve warm. Store in an airtight container (I recommend rewarming cool rolls in microwave for best results.
**I did make this into a bread. I did everything the same until cutting into portions. I kept it as a whole, rolled it up and placed in a buttered loaf pan. The baking time should be increased to 38 minutes, and the internal temperature should be 195 degrees.
