These soft dinner rolls use starchy potatoes to make them tender and soft while bread flour gives them a bit of chew. Freeze dried garlic and chives (thanks, Litehouse Foods) lend tons of flavor. Perfect with butter or use them to sop up tasty gravy!
Ingredients
- 1 medium Idaho® Russet Potato
- 1 teaspoons kosher salt
- Cold water to cover
- 2 oz (barely scant ¼ cup) fruity olive oil
- 1 ½ Tablespoons granulated sugar
- 1 1/2 teaspoons Litehouse Freeze Dried Garlic
- 1 Tablespoon Litehouse Freeze Dried Chives
- 1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
- 10-20 grinds fresh black pepper, depending on how much pepper you like
- 9.5 oz (by weight) buttermilk (about 1 cup plus 2 Tablespoons)
- 1 large egg
- 1 pound about 3 ¾ cups bread flour
- 1 Tablespoon active dry yeast
- melted butter for finishing, about 4 Tablespoons
Instructions
- Wash, peel, and cut the potato into 1″ pieces.
- Place in a saucepan with 1 teaspoon kosher salt and water to cover. Bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to a simmer and cook for about 15 minutes or until potato pieces are easily pierced with a knife. Drain, cover, and return to low heat for 5 minutes to dry a bit.
- Crush the freeze dried garlic just a bit with the back of a spoon and place in the bowl of your stand mixer along with the chives.
- Use a kitchen scale to measure out 6 oz of cooked potato and place in the bowl of your stand mixer along with the oil, sugar, salt, and pepper.
- Fit your mixer with the paddle attachment and mix on medium low speed until the potato mixture is smooth.
- Add the buttermilk, egg, flour and yeast, in that order.
- Fit your mixer with the dough hook, and mix on low speed until the flour is evenly moistened and the dough is starting to come together, about 2 minutes..
- Knead on medium speed for about 10 minutes, until the dough is smooth, shiny, stretchy and clears the sides of the mixer bowl. The dough is soft, so some will stick in the bottom of the bowl. That’s just fine.
- Scrape the dough into a rough ball in the mixer bowl, spray with a bit of oil or pan spray, and set aside in a warm place to rise until double. Since yeast loves potatoes so much, this will only take about an hour or an hour and 15 minutes.
- Scrape the risen dough out onto a lightly oiled surface and press out the gases.
- Divide the dough into 12 or 24 even pieces. If you have a scale, weigh the entire amount of dough and then divide that weight by the number of rolls you want. Now you have a weight for portioning. I scaled 12 large rolls at just over 3 oz each. If you make small rolls, you’ll be scaling at 1.5 oz for 24 rolls. You can also make burger buns, scaling them at 4 oz for 9 buns.
- Stretch each portion of dough to find a smooth side and then tuck the rest of the dough under to form a smooth ball. Tighten up the ball by rolling it between your palms on your work surface.
- In a 9” x 13” nonstick pan, evenly space the rolls in 3 rows of 4 for large rolls or 4 rows of 6 for small ones. If making burger buns, place on a parchment-lined half sheet pan, leaving enough space so the buns won’t touch after rising.
- Preheat oven to 375F.
- Cover the rolls with plastic wrap and let rise in a warm place until almost double, about 30-40 minutes.
- Bake for about 25 minutes for large rolls and 20 minutes for small rolls. Rotate the pan if browning unevenly. The rolls are done when the internal temperature reaches 195-200F. They will be deeply golden brown on top and golden brown on the sides. If the rolls seem to brown too quickly, tent loosely with foil.
- As soon as you take the rolls out of the oven, brush them with melted butter.
- Allow the rolls to cool in the pan for 15 minutes. Then carefully ease them out onto a cooling rack to cool completely.
- Wrap loosely in foil and reheat to serve. They’re great cold, too, but you will really love them warm. Enjoy!
