Today's Cheapskate Meal: Dinner Rolls

Dinner rolls during the first rise.

Uniform dinner rolls during the second rise.  The recipe made 80 rolls weighing an average of 25 grams each.

Dinner rolls just after they came out of the oven.  They're beautiful.

This recipe comes from the website http://www.onceamonthmom.com/.  It is designed to be frozen part of the way through the procedure then thawed at some later date.  The batch makes so many that you could totally do that. I could easily see making sets of 20 of these little beauties.  However, I don't have the number of smaller baking dishes needed to freeze these.  Plus, now I have plenty of excuse to eat delicious carbs over the next couple of days.

These rolls have a slightly pretzel-y flavor that I can't explain.  If I were more like Alton Brown I might know why they have that distinct taste.  Since I'm not more like Alton Brown, I'll just remain ignorant and enjoy the pretzel-y-ness. 

These rolls have very normal rise times.  Being slow in the kitchen, though, I - of course - have to find a way to make them take longer than necessary.  I'm obsessive about uniform rolls so I weigh them out on my digital scale to get them to weigh the same.  I weighed in grams and made rolls that were 24-27 grams each.  I ended up with one roll that was 36 grams.  I made two 18 gram rolls out of it and didn't notice a bit of difference when we ate them tonight.

  I made this recipe at Thanksgiving and it was the one failure of the day.  I think I made them too large, and that caused them to not cook through in the middle.  These smaller rolls, though, were perfectly done.

I am planning to make potato soup for lunch tomorrow, and these will go great alongside.

Dinner Rolls

2 cups warm milk  $.47

1/2 c. melted butter $.63

1/2 c. sugar $.17

2 1/4 tsp. yeast $.12

4 1/2 c. flour $.16

1/2 tsp. baking powder $.03

1 tsp. baking soda $.03

1/2 tsp. salt $.00

Combine warm milk, melted butter, and sugar.  Stir until the sugar is dissolve, then add the yeast.  Let stand for 10 minutes.  The yeast should be bubbly.  (I assemble my bread doughs a little differently.  I add the yeast to the milk and butter and let stand for 10 minutes.  Then I add the sugar and stir until dissoved.) 

In a large bowl, combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.  Pour the milk/butter/sugar/yeast mixture over the dry ingredients.  Mix very well.

Place bowl in a warm place, cover, and let rise for about an hour.

After the rise is complete, punch down, and divide into two sections.  Roll dough into golf-ball sized rolls and place in a greased 9x13 pan. (I used a 9x13 and a 9x9. I also didn't divide the dough into two sections; I just weighed it out.)  Cover and allow to rise until double. 

About half way through the rise, preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  Bake the rolls for 12-15 minutes. (I started at 12, then reset the timer for another 3 minutes when they were still very raw looking.  After that 3 minutes, they still didn't look quite done, so I let them go another 3 minutes.  That gives me a total of 18 minutes.)

Upon removing rolls from the oven, rub with cold butter.  (I also like to sprinkle them with a tiny bit of salt.)

Enjoy as soon as you can touch them without blistering your fingers.

The total cost of these rolls is $1.61.  These will last several meals.