Thanksgiving Dinner Rolls

It's officially the week of Thanksgiving!

I've always loved Thanksgiving, even back when I was in elementary school and our music teacher taught us songs like, "Come, Ye Thankful People Come," "We Gather Together," and of course, "Over the River and Through the Woods!" 

Do you remember construction paper turkeys? Pilgrim hats? The anticipation of a big family gathering?

Well, some things have changed. I'm not sure elementary students even make construction paper turkeys anymore. When my children were small, they had been taken over by the paper plate turkeys. 

And this year, everything is different! We're still planning a family Thanksgiving, but it will look much different than the last several years with a smaller crowd. Much smaller.

But one thing hasn't changed: the food! We're planning a traditional Thanksgiving meal with turkey, dressing, two kinds of potatoes, green beans, jello salad, pumpkin pie...and these beauties!

I've been making homemade dinner rolls for close to fifty years.

Man, that hurts just to type it! Fifty years??? 

In 1972, our family was visiting friends (it was during the Olympic games - I remember watching Mark Spitz win a gold medal at their house!) and the mom made dinner rolls to go with our meal. My dad ate one, then another, then he said to me, "If you learn to make dinner rolls like these, I'll double your allowance!"

I may not have a good memory when it comes to some things, but a promised raise in my allowance? Oh yes, I remembered that.

I started to work right away. First, I got the recipe from our hostess. I still have it, written in my high school handwriting.

As soon as we got home, I started baking. I had just begun trying to learn to make bread that summer, so I was slightly familiar with the ingredients. By the time I graduated from high school, I was baking a fairly good dinner roll.

After I got married, I was still working on perfection. I incorporated whole wheat flour and wheat germ into the original recipe, and came up with "Floyd's Favorite Dinner Rolls." They were my staple for years!

Fast forward a few decades....my bread baking continued to improve, but I was missing that elusive texture...chewy...melt in your mouth softness...light and airy...pull-apart yum...

Until now. I have finally earned that raise in my allowance!

The secret has three parts: ingredients, practice, and the right recipe.

1) The ingredients: 

A simple bread recipe is easy - flour, salt, and yeast. 

But to make a super soft dough, you need fat. 

And if you want it airy, you need sugar. The yeast gets hungry if you don't feed it right, and on a diet of sugar it grows quickly, giving your bread dough lots of nice airy bubbles. 

Another key to a soft dough is eggs - at least one per dozen rolls.

So, as you're searching for your go-to bread recipe, look for those ingredients.

2) Practice!

I hope it won't take you almost fifty years, but you do need to make a lot of bread to get a loaf you can be proud of.

With practice, you'll learn your kitchen's climate - which kind of flour works best for you, how much flour is too much (and too little,) how warm your liquid needs to be - and if you need to be generous or stingy with the recipe's amount. You'll learn how to knead your dough and what it feels like when the kneading time is perfect. 

One reason why it took me so long is that every time we moved, my kitchen's climate changed!

Learn to gauge the moisture and crumb in your finished loaf. And learn how to adjust what went wrong.

3) The right recipe.

For this batch of rolls, I used a new recipe from a cookbook written by a friend of mine, Martha Greene.

By the way, you can buy this book HERE, and it's even on sale!

Martha's recipe checks off all the boxes I mentioned earlier: it calls for butter, sugar and eggs. Definitely a sweet roll dough that will give you light and airy dinner rolls!

The sweet roll dough in one of my other favorite cookbooks should give the same results - The original 1950 Betty Crocker cookbook is the source for that one. 

I don't know if that recipe is included in the 2017 reprint edition, but I hope so!

Another source for great recipes is Pinterest. I found this one there: Recipe from I Heart Eating

Recipes abound, so start baking!

What traditional dishes are you making for Thanksgiving?

Jan Drexler has always been a "book girl" who still loves to spend time within the pages of her favorite books. She lives in the Black Hills of South Dakota with her dear husband of many years and their active, crazy dogs, Jack and Sam. You can learn more about Jan and her books on her website, www.JanDrexler.com.

Homemade Dinner Rolls

by Jan Drexler (The Mid-Westerner)

Happy Thanksgiving week! Are you ready? Is your turkey thawing in the fridge? Have you rounded up extra tables and chairs for the extended family gathering? Have you planned your menu and done your grocery shopping?

The "experts" will tell you to take advantage of convenience foods for this yearly feast. After all, if you're the hostess of a big gathering, you don't want to be stressed about desserts!

But this expert is telling you to do something a bit different: to reduce the stress, let your guests cook and bring what they like, and reserve your favorite parts of the meal for your own preparation.

After all, for some of us cooking is our "love language." We love to cook and bake and shower the goodies on our loved ones. So when Thanksgiving comes, our house is open and I cook my favorites!

One of those is dinner rolls.

I had planned to share my favorite dinner roll recipe today, but then realized I already had! But we can all use a refresher, right?

I've revised a few things and added a couple pictures, but here's the recipe, just in time for Thanksgiving:

Dinner Rolls for Holidays...or any time!

Yes, yes, I know this is homemade bread. But really - can it be that hard? After all, our grandmothers for generations back made bread every week, or maybe even every day if their family was large enough.

This is the recipe I cut my bread-making teeth on.

It started like this: Once upon a time (okay, it was the mid-70's) our family was visiting some friends, and our hostess served homemade dinner rolls. My dad took one bite, looked at me and said, "If you learn to make rolls like these, I'll double your allowance."

This is the mid-70's me. Yes, Gunne Sax dress and all :)

(By the way, I'm the only one who remembers him saying that...but I'm sure he did!)

I took him up on the challenge. I got the recipe from our hostess, followed the directions in Mom's old Betty Crocker Picture Cookbook, and made rolls. Batch after batch. They turned out tasty and delicious. From there I branched out to using different flours, different methods, different recipes...but this one is still my favorite. :)

Jan's Dinner Rolls

Ingredients:

2 packages instant dry yeast (or 2 Tablespoons)
2 cups milk
1/2 cup sugar
2 teaspoons salt
1/2 cup butter
2 eggs
2 cups whole wheat flour
4-6 cups all-purpose or bread flour

You can make this recipe completely by hand (like I did for years), or use a large capacity mixer (like I do now.)

First, heat the milk, sugar, butter and salt together. You can cheat and use the microwave, but I like to heat it up in a pan on the stove. But you don't want it to get too hot! Just warm enough to soften the butter.

Now, this is important! Before you do anything else, make sure your milk mixture isn't too hot. You want it to be lukewarm. You can stick a (clean!!!) pinky finger in to test it, or you can use a thermometer. If you do the finger test, it should feel slightly warm. If you use a thermometer, it should be between 110° and 115°.

(Does anyone know what happens if your liquid is too hot? It will kill the yeast. We don't like dead yeast. It makes hard, flat bread :(  )

Pour this into a large bowl (or your mixer).

Freshly ground wheat flour! Mmm-mm!

Add the two cups whole wheat flour, two eggs and 2 packages yeast. Whisk these ingredients together until smooth.

Let the batter rest for about twenty minutes.

Yes, I said rest. You want to wake up the yeast and let some of those flavors mingle.

After twenty minutes or so, add the rest of the flour a cup at a time, mixing each cup in completely before adding the next. If you're doing this by hand, use a large spoon, and stir it in until you can't stir the dough anymore. If you're using a mixer, use your kneading hook and add flour just until sides of your bowl no longer have dough sticking to them and the dough forms a ball.

This dough is just right - the sides of the bowl are coming clean,
and the dough is elastic.

BUT - be careful not to add too much flour. Too much will make your bread heavy and stiff. Too little will make it hard to handle. This is where practice comes in....

Now it's time to knead the dough.

If you're using a mixer, set your timer for seven minutes, and let the mixer work.

If you're kneading the dough by hand, sprinkle your clean counter or bread board with about a cup of flour, and then knead. Fold one side of the lump of dough over onto the other, and push down. Turn the lump a quarter turn and repeat. Do this until the dough is smooth and elastic - about five minutes or so.

After kneading, you need to let the dough rise. In a mixer, just cover the bowl and let it sit. If you're making it by hand, put the dough into a greased bowl and cover with a damp towel.

Wait for about forty-five minutes, or until the dough is doubled.

Now comes the fun part! Divide the dough into forty-eight balls - they'll each be about 1 1/2 inches in diameter - and put two balls in each part of a muffin tin. Be sure to grease your tins!

If you don't have two muffin tins, you can make thirty-six balls and space them out on a greased cookie sheet (with sides).

Cover the rolls, and let the dough rise another forty-five minutes or so.

Bake in a 350° oven for 18-20 minutes, or until lightly browned. As soon as you remove them from the oven, brush melted butter onto the top of each roll (optional, but makes the crust softer).

Enjoy!

Of course, dinner rolls are only part of our Thanksgiving menu. I'm also making the turkey and dressing, and others are bringing potatoes, vegetables, salads, desserts... I'm getting hungry already!

We're expanding our table (and borrowing one from church) to fit our 15 to 20 family/extended family members. If this year is like other years, there will be some eating and a lot of visiting. And a lot of just sitting back and drinking in the love. :)

What are your Thanksgiving plans? Are you hosting, or are you going to someone else's house? Or are you spending your day volunteering to help others have a wonderful holiday?

Let us know!

Jan Drexler loves her family, her home, cooking and just about anything made by hand. But she loves her Lord most of all.

Stop by Jan's website to learn more about her books: www.JanDrexler.com

Dinner Rolls for Holidays...or any time!

I know this post is too late for Easter, but this recipe is so delicious that you'll want to try it this week.

Yes, yes, I know this is homemade bread - but really. Can it be that hard? After all, our grandmothers for generations back made bread every week, or maybe even every day if their family was large enough.

This is the recipe I cut my bread-making teeth on.

It started like this: Once upon a time (okay, it was the mid-70's) our family was visiting some friends, and our hostess served homemade dinner rolls. My dad took one bite, looked at me and said, "If you learn to make rolls like these, I'll double your allowance."

This is the mid-70's me. Yes, Gunne Sax dress and all :)

(By the way, I'm the only one who remembers him saying that...but I'm sure he did!)

I took him up on the challenge. I got the recipe from our hostess, followed the directions in Mom's old Betty Crocker Picture Cookbook, and made rolls. Batch after batch. They turned out tasty and delicious. From there I branched out to using different flours, different methods, different recipes...but this one is still my favorite. :)

Jan's Dinner Rolls

Ingredients:

2 packages instant dry yeast (or 2 Tablespoons)
2 cups milk
1/2 cup sugar
2 teaspoons salt
1/2 cup butter
2 eggs
2 cups whole wheat flour
4-6 cups all-purpose or bread flour

You can make this recipe completely by hand (like I did for years), or use a large capacity mixer (like I do now.)

First, heat the milk, sugar, butter and salt together. You can cheat and use the microwave, but I like to heat it up in a pan on the stove. But you don't want it to get too hot! Just warm enough to soften the butter.

Now, this is important! Before you do anything else, make sure your milk mixture isn't too hot. You want it to be lukewarm. You can stick a (clean!!!) pinky finger in to test it, or you can use a thermometer. If you do the finger test, it should feel slightly warm. If you use a thermometer, it should be between 110° and 115°.

(Does anyone know what happens if your liquid is too hot? It will kill the yeast. We don't like dead yeast. It makes hard, flat bread :(  )

Pour this into a large bowl (or your mixer).

Freshly ground wheat flour! Mmm-mm!

Add the two cups whole wheat flour, two eggs and 2 packages yeast. Wisk these ingredients together until it's smooth.

Let the batter rest for about twenty minutes.

Yes, I said rest. You want to wake up the yeast and let some of those flavors mingle.

After twenty minutes or so, add the rest of the flour a cup at a time, mixing each cup in completely before adding the next. If you're doing this by hand, use a large spoon, and stir it in until you can't stir the dough anymore. If you're using a mixer, use your kneading hook and add flour just until sides of your bowl no longer have dough sticking to them and the dough forms a ball.

This dough is just right - the sides of the bowl are coming clean,
and the dough is elastic.

BUT - be careful not to add too much flour. Too much will make your bread heavy and stiff. Too little will make it hard to handle. This is where practice comes in....

Now it's time to knead the dough.

If you have a mixer, set your timer for seven minutes, and let the mixer work.

If you're kneading the dough by hand, sprinkle your clean counter or bread board with about a cup of flour, and then knead. Fold one side of the lump of dough over onto the other, and push down. Turn the lump a quarter turn and repeat. Do this until the dough is smooth and elastic - about five minutes or so.

After kneading, you need to let the dough rise. In a mixer, just cover the bowl and let it sit. If you're making it by hand, put the dough into a greased bowl and cover with a damp towel.

Wait for about forty-five minutes, or until the dough is doubled.

Now comes the fun part! Divide the dough into forty-eight balls - they'll each be about 1 1/2 inches in diameter - and put two balls in each part of a muffin tin. Be sure to grease your tins!

If you don't have two muffin tins, you can make thirty-six balls and space them out on a greased cookie sheet (with sides).

Cover the rolls, and let the dough rise another forty-five minutes or so.

Bake in a 350° oven for 18-20 minutes, or until lightly browned. As soon as you remove them from the oven, brush melted butter onto the top of each roll (optional, but makes the crust softer).

Enjoy!

It takes about three hours for me to make these rolls, so if I make them in the morning, I have the afternoon to play!

On Saturday we took our first trip of the year to Mt. Rushmore.

Even this early in the year, there were quite a few tourists there.

Cute story - on one of our visits last year, on the very spot where I took this picture, we witnessed a young man proposing to his girlfriend! He must have been pretty confident, because the whole family was there - parents, grandma, brothers and sisters. What a memorable place for a proposal!

On this visit I saw something I had never noticed before. The faces of the presidents are carved so carefully, but the hair? Look at Lincoln's hair. It's natural stone. Lincoln's face just peers out from under the top of the mountain.

We also saw another mountain goat! This one was much smaller than last week's big guy licking salt off the road. This one was munching grass along the shoulder of the highway.

And what color is that grass? Green!!!

Spring has finally arrived!