Homemade Hamburger Rolls? You're Welcome!

It took me long enough. But I finally baked hamburger rolls.

Summer cookouts, I'm ready for you.

It turned out to be surprisingly easy. I used my Dinner Roll recipe, which you can find here. But I'm going to rewrite it here, because my process has evolved a little over time.

Dinner Rolls

Based on Aunt Betty's Sweet Roll Dough

1½ C lukewarm water

1 T yeast

¼ C sugar

¼ C canola oil

¼ C instant potato flakes

½ C instant nonfat dry milk (9 T non-instant)

¾ tsp. salt

2 eggs

1½ C (6.4 oz.) soft white whole wheat flour + 3 C (12.8 oz.) hard white whole wheat flour

Note: This is my preferred flour combination. Other alternatives:

1½ C (6.4 oz.) soft white whole wheat flour + 3 C (12.8 oz.) hard red whole wheat flour

1½ C (6.4 oz.) soft white whole wheat flour + 3 C (12.8 oz.) all-purpose flour

4½ C (19.2 oz.) hard white whole wheat, hard red whole wheat, or all-purpose flour

Pour warm water in stand mixer (KitchenAid) bowl. Add sugar, yeast, and the soft white whole wheat flour. Using the paddle (not the dough hook), mix on lowest setting while adding the canola oil, potato flakes, dry milk, and salt. Stop the mixer and add a few spoonfuls of the hard white whole wheat flour, and then the eggs. Resume mixing on lowest setting; add the rest of the flour, and continue mixing for 5 minutes. Turn off mixer and cover the bowl with damp kitchen towel. Let dough sit for 30 minutes.

On a clean, dry counter, sprinkle about ½ C hard white whole wheat flour. Have some more on hand, just in case. Lower the mixing bowl and detach the paddle, disturbing the dough as little as possible. Use a wet spoon to scrape dough from the paddle into the bowl. Use the wet spoon to scrape the dough from the bowl onto the floured counter. It will come out fairly easily because of the rising.

Knead the dough 40-50 times, until it is smooth and elastic, but not dry.

Place the dough in a large bowl with a small amount of canola oil to coat the surface. Cover with wax paper or plastic wrap. Set in a cold place—probably the refrigerator—for 1½ hours.

Punch down the dough and fold it a few times. Divide it into 24 pieces. A dough scraper is great for cutting the dough. Form each piece into a ball by stretching the top and pinching the ends together at the bottom. Place the rolls about ½-1 inch apart on buttered (or parchment papered) baking sheets. 24 fit nicely on a baker's half sheet. Cover the rolls; let rise at warm room temperature for 45 minutes. If your baking sheet situation is such that you won't be able to fit all of the rolls in the oven at the same time, set the ones that will have to wait in the refrigerator, setting them out again when you put the first ones in the oven.

For Hamburger Rolls: After making the balls, flatten each ball into a 3-inch round. Place the rounds about ½ inch apart on buttered (or parchment papered) baking sheets. 12 fit nicely on a baker's half sheet.

A few minutes before the rolls are finished rising, preheat the oven to 400°F. Bake the rolls at 400°F for 5 minutes; reduce temperature to 350°F and continue baking another 10-12 minutes, or until the rolls are browned on top. Remove the pan from the oven and set to cool on a rack.

After the rolls are completely cool, put them in clean plastic bags. Freeze any that you will not use within a couple of days.

Chocolate Bread--Beta Testing

I decided to bake chocolate bread for Valentine's Day. I had never eaten chocolate bread, but I had eaten chocolate croissants, which are heavenly. Maybe next year I'll be ready to make chocolate croissants.

I envisioned chocolate bread as similar to cinnamon bread. Except chocolate, not cinnamon. I read many recipes and came up with this:

I used my roll dough and Nestle's semi-sweet chocolate chips. I made two half-batches. One was 1/4 soft white whole-wheat flour and 3/4 all-purpose flour. The other was 1/4 soft white whole-wheat flour and 3/4 hard white whole-wheat flour. With each, I made three little loaves of chocolate bread and one large loaf of cinnamon bread.

Pictured above: on the left is the 100% whole-wheat bread; on the right is the mostly-white bread.

All testers, ages 17 months to adult, loved both kinds. The adults agreed that there was (gasp!) too much chocolate. In my next attempt, I plan to melt the chocolate and spread it on the dough before rolling it up.

One of the beta testers took the whole-wheat cinnamon bread home.

Further testing of this batch will occur after dinner tonight!

Monkey Bread--Updated

Monkey Bread, or Pull-Apart Bread, is yet another way of baking my Aunt Betty's awesome roll dough, for which you can find the recipe here. You can use bread dough or even (breathe, Kathy) canned biscuit dough, but I prefer roll dough. This roll dough.

This is a lot of dough, so you might want to cut the recipe down. Today I used half of the dough to bake 2 dozen dinner rolls, and the other half to make 5 small loaves and one regular loaf of Monkey Bread. So, with half of the dough, you can make 8 small loaves or 3 regular loaves. (Don't get too hung up by the proportions here!) I don't have a bundt pan, so I don't know how much that would take.
 

Combine ¾ C sugar and 6 tsp. cinnamon in plastic container or bag. Cut or pinch Sweet Roll Dough into pieces; then shake 10-12 pieces at a time in the cinnamon-sugar mixture. Place the pieces in buttered loaf pans or Bundt pan.

When I made this before, I pinched off the dough into small pieces (about 3/4-1 inch in diameter). That would be fine for one or two loaves. But I was making even more that day than I made today. So it took forever. Today I decided to pat the dough out and cut it with a pizza cutter. That worked much better!

Update: Instead of flouring your counter, smear a little canola oil on the counter and pat the dough out onto it. The cinnamon-sugar sticks to the dough better this way.

 

   

Melt butter. Add brown sugar and cook and stir until it begins to boil. Pour mixture of butter and brown sugar over dough in pans. (1 C butter + ½ C brown sugar is enough for ½ batch of dough, yielding 8 small loaves or 3 regular loaves.)

That's a lot of butter! Remember to make this is an occasional treat!
 

Let rise. Bake at 350° for about 15-20 minutes for small pans and longer for regular pans, until browned. Invert onto plate.

If you can, eat this when it is a few minutes out of the oven and still warm.

The. Best.

It's still very good when cold. I have no experience with eating it the next day.