Hey guys it's Bettie from Baker Bettie.com and welcome back to another video.
Now today we are learning how to make classic dinner rolls. Now this is a
recipe that uses yeast which I hear all the time is really intimidating for
people. But I'm going to show you just how easy it really can be. We're going to
walk through the process step-by-step and these rolls turn out so soft and
tender and they're just a little bit sweet and they are perfect for a
Thanksgiving dinner or a Christmas dinner or really just any occasion that
you want some really delicious yeast rolls for. Now if you are interested in
learning more about working with yeast I actually have a whole yeast bread
fundamentals course on my website which I will link in the description box for
this video. I highly recommend taking the course it is packed with all kinds of
information about working with yeast. But today let's walk step-by-step through
making some classic yeast rolls and let's go ahead and dive in. Now to make
our soft dinner rolls we are going to be making what is called an enriched yeast
dough. Now this just means that the yeast dough includes some fat as well as eggs
and sugar and these things are going to make our dinner rolls really soft and
tender. So I'm starting with 6 tablespoons of unsalted butter and this
butter is at room temperature. It is very soft and it's soft enough that I'm going
to be able to easily stir it together with my other ingredients. Now the butter
in this recipe is going to really help tenderize our yeast rolls. Fat in general
works to inhibit gluten formation which is going to help keep our rolls really
soft and tender. Now I'm adding to my butter 1/4 cup of granulated sugar which
is just going to give our rolls a slight sweetness and I'm also adding 1 teaspoon
of kosher salt. Now that salt is not only going to help
flavor our yeast dough but it is also going to help control our yeast activity.
If we were to make a yeast dough without any salt at all our yeast would be far
too active so it's a really important ingredient in any yeast dough,
So now I'm just going to take a spoon and mix all of this together until it is
well combined before we add our next ingredients.
We are going to add two eggs that are at room temperature and these eggs are
going to add a lot of tenderness and a little bit of chew into our dinner rolls.
So I'm going to add those in and mix those with the rest of the ingredients.
Our next ingredient is one cup of whole milk and I have slightly warmed this
milk just by heating it in the microwave for about thirty seconds. Now you want to
be really careful about the temperature of your liquid when you are making yeast
dough. Yeast really likes warm temperatures somewhere about a hundred
and ten degrees Fahrenheit is a perfect temperature for yeast to wake up and
become active. But if you go a little too hot with your liquid you can easily kill
your yeast. So you want to be really careful, yeast will wake up with cold
temperatures it's just gonna be a little slower moving so I always suggest to err
on the side of your liquid being a little too cool if you are unsure. So now
I'm just going to go ahead and mix that into our mixture.
The last ingredients for our yeast rolls are our flour and our yeast.
Now almost every yeast recipe you will find is going to list a range in the
flour that you want to put into your bread dough. Flour is very temperamental
and depending on where you live and what type of flour you're using you might
need more or less in your bread dough. So you want to start with the lowest
quantity listed and then you will add more in as needed when you are kneading
your bread dough. So I'm going to start with four cups of all-purpose unbleached
flour here and then we will add some more into our dough as needed and our
last ingredient is the dried yeast. Now you need 1 of 7 gram package or two and 1/4
teaspoon of dried yeast and I have two different kinds of yeast. Here the first
is active dry yeast and the second is rapid rise which is also known as quick
rise or instant yeast. Now you can use either of these for this recipe but I am
going to be telling you how you could let these rise overnight in your
refrigerator if you do want to prep them the day before and if you are going to
choose that option you really do want to use the active dry yeast instead of the
rapid rise yeast so that you don't over proof your rolls. Now if you are going to
be making these and baking them same day you can use either active dry or rapid
rise so since I am baking these today I'm going to go ahead and use my quick
rise yeast so that my dough gets going a little bit faster. So we're just going to
add the whole package of yeast into our dough and if you are using the active
dry you can do this the same way just add it right in at this point. You don't
need to hydrate the yeast like some recipes call for. And now we're just
going to stir all of this together.
Now you can see that my dough is pretty wet and sticky at this point so I'm
going to add just a little bit more flour. I'm not going to add too much
because I can always add more later but just a little bit more so that when I go
to knead it it's a little bit easier to handle.
Now that all of our ingredients are mixed into our dough we are going to
knead it by hand. Now if you do have a stand mixer with a dough hook you can
definitely use that but I want to show you that you can definitely make this
without any special equipment and kneading by hand is actually such a nice
way to get a feel for the dough and I find it quite therapeutic so I encourage
you to do it if you've never tried it. So now what we are going to do is we are
going to lightly flour our work surface here and we're going to turn our dough
out onto the work surface.
And now we're going to start kneading our dough by hand so what you want to do
is lightly flour the top of it as well as flour your hands and to start
kneading your dough you're going to take the end that is the farthest away from
you and fold it in half and then use the heels of your hands to rock it away from
you. Now give it a 90-degree turn and
continue that process of folding it in half and rocking it away from you. Now as
you do this you're likely going to need to add a little more flour as it starts
sticking to the counter and if you have a bench scraper you can kind of scrape
the dough as it sticks to the counter up add a little more flour and continue
kneading. Now this is a very soft dough so I encourage you to refrain from
adding too much flour at the beginning of the kneading process because as you
need it it will become a little more elastic and less sticky. So you can
always add more flour but it's hard to go back the other way if you do add too
much. Now you want to continue this kneading process for about ten minutes
until you get a really soft and elastic dough,
You are done kneading your dough when it is really smooth and elastic. It still
has a slightly sticky texture when you touch it and if you press down on it
with your fingers it immediately springs a back up. So that's how you know you've
developed a really nice gluten structure and now we are going to let this dough
rest and rise. So what has happened is the yeast has been hydrated which woke
it up and we gave it a food source with the flour and the sugar in our dough and
now it needs some time to start feeding. Yeast is a living organism it's actually
a fungus and it was asleep in its dry State but now it is awake and as it
starts feeding it is going to produce carbon dioxide gas as well as alcohol.
Now these two things are going to help flavor our yeast dough and the carbon
dioxide gas is what is going to make our bread rise so it needs some time to do
that. So I am going to transfer my dough just right back into the mixing bowl
that I mixed it in and I'm going to cover it with some plastic wrap and let
it rise. So we want to let this rise until it is about double in size. Now if
you did use the rapid rise yeast this should take about 45 minutes to an hour
and if you used the active dry yeast this will take about 90 minutes to two
hours. Now that's really depending on how warm your kitchen is and how warm the
liquid was when you added it to your dough. So if you do have a really warm
kitchen, your dough is going to rise much quicker then if you have a really cold
kitchen. So you just need to watch it and when it's about double in size we will
come back and shape the dough. I made this dough earlier and it has had
about an hour to rise and you can see it is really puffy and there's a lot of air
bubbles in it and that is from the carbon dioxide gas that has been
produced from the yeast feeding on the starches and the flour and the sugar so
we can go ahead and shape this dough now. Now we are going to lightly deflate it
by just pressing down on in the center and bringing the sides in.
And now we can go ahead and shape our dinner rolls. So give your countertop
just a very light dusting of flour you shouldn't need too much and scrape that
dough out. And now we are going to divide it into our roll portions. Now I like to
make 16 for something like a Thanksgiving dinner because you don't
want a really huge roll when you're going to have all this other food so I'm
just going to eyeball it here and I'm going to divide my dough in half and
then each half in half and then each quarter into four pieces so we get 16
rolls.
So I have 16 pieces of dough that are all about the same size and now we are
going to shape them into rolls. Now I'm placing a piece of plastic wrap over the
pieces that I'm not working with just so they don't dry out while we're shaping.
And we're gonna start with 1 piece of dough and what you want to do is just
sort of pull down on the sides of the dough and to bring it down underneath to
create a little bit of a seam on the bottom almost like a little purse. Now
once you have that shaped you want to put that down on your countertop on a
part of the counter top that doesn't have any flour and you're going to
create a C with your hand and cup it around the roll and just work it back
and forth until you get a smooth surface like that. Now this is creating some
tension on the outside of the dough to create a little bit of a skin and this
is really going to help hold those gases in so that they get a really nice rise
to them. So I'll show you that one more time take a piece of dough go ahead and
pull down all around on the sides bring that down to the middle underneath to
create a bit of a purse seam and set that seam side down on the countertop
and use your hand in the shape of a C to roll it until you get a really nice
smooth surface. Just like that. Now I'm going to position these four across and
four down and giving them a little bit of space in between so they can rise and
I'm going to shape all of these rolls. Once your rolls are shaped you want to
cover them with plastic wrap and then they need to rise a second time. Now you
have two options for this step of the process you could let them rise at room
temperature and then bake them as soon as they have risen or you could put them
in your refrigerator and let them slowly rise overnight. Now cold temperatures
really slow down yeast and if you do put them in the refrigerator you can let
them rise anywhere about 12 to 18 hours. So if you are
making these for something like Thanksgiving or Christmas it's really
nice to prep them the night before and then you can bake them the next day. Now
I'm going to bake mine same day so I'm going to let these rise at room
temperature and because I used the quick rise yeast this should take about 45
minutes to 1 hour for them to rise and get about double in size again or if you
did use the active dry yeast it that might take 90 minutes before they are
ready to go in the oven. So I'm going to let these rise and then we will prep
them for baking. So my rolls are finished rising they are nice and puffy and
doubled in size and now they are ready to go into the oven so I am going to
brush them with an egg wash which is just one egg whisked with 1 tablespoon
of water and this is optional but it's going to give your rolls that really
nice shiny glistening top when they come out of the oven. It looks really nice and
pretty but you can just leave them as is. My oven is preheated to 375 degrees
Fahrenheit and we're just going to bake these until they are golden brown. So I
just pulled my yeast rolls out of the oven they are golden brown, they look
perfect and they are soft and tender and just a little bit chewy, just a little
bit sweet and they are going to go perfectly with your Thanksgiving or
Christmas dinner or really just any meal that you want a really nice dinner roll
with. Now I hope this tutorial really helped make yeast rolls seem really
approachable for you and if you enjoyed this video make sure you give it a
thumbs up I'm always happy to answer any of your questions so make sure you leave
those in the comments section. And if you aren't already subscribed you can hit
that subscription button and ring the notification bell so you never miss a
video. You can also follow me @BakerBettie on Instagram and on Facebook and
next week is Thanksgiving so I won't have a new video for you then but I'll
be back the week after with a new recipe tutorial.
I'll see you guys then and have a wonderful Thanksgiving. Bye!