Recipe Background
Amish Dinner Rolls: A soft, buttery delight; ideal for nostalgic moments.
The first time I made Amish Dinner Rolls, I was knee-deep in cardboard boxes during the whirlwind chaos of moving into my childhood home. After years away, coming back meant unearthing memories hidden in every corner. In the midst of organizing my old room, I found a dusty recipe card tucked inside a book. It was for these rolls, a comforting relic my grandmother often baked on Sundays. I remember how she'd reserve leftover potato water from dinner to enhance the dough's tenderness—a tip that had slipped my mind until reading it again that day.
As I stood in the new-old kitchen that now belonged to me, I gathered ingredients like puzzle pieces waiting to be joined. The eggs, sugar, salt, and softened butter came together with a cup of unseasoned mashed potatoes and lukewarm water as if performing a familiar dance. From the haze of flour on the counter to the warm swell of yeast mingling with those mashed potatoes, it felt like I was inviting my grandmother to this new beginning with me. When the rolls emerged golden and inviting from the oven, I couldn’t help but remember her knack for always brushing them with just a touch more butter, ensuring a luxurious finish.
Revitalizing that recipe was more than baking. It was about rekindling love for the simple things and embracing a forgotten piece of my past. I learned to let the dough rise not just once, but twice, and found it's crucial to use softened butter for richer flavor. In that spirit, the rolls themselves became an emblem of homecoming, symbolizing little more than warmth and connection against life’s backdrop of change.
Ingredients
- 2 large eggs
- 1/3 cup sugar
- 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
- 6 tablespoons butter softened, plus more, optional, to taste, melted
- 1 cup prepared mashed potatoes unseasoned and lightly packed
- 2 1/2 teaspoons instant yeast
- 3/4 cup water lukewarm, using the leftover water from boiling the potatoes if possible
- 3 cups all-purpose flour divided, plus more, to taste
Directions
- Lightly grease a bowl.
- In a separate large bowl add the eggs, the sugar, the salt, 6 tablespoons of the softened butter, the mashed potatoes, the yeast, the water, and 3 cups of the flour. Mix until combined, carefully adding the extra flour as needed until a soft dough forms. You may not need all of the flour.
- Place the dough in the prepared bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Let the dough rise in a warm place until it's doubled in size, about 1 1/2 hours.
- Lightly grease a 9x13-inch baking pan.
- Gently punch the dough down to deflate it.
- Using the extra flour, heavily dust a work surface.
- Place the dough on the floured work surface and knead, adding more of the extra flour as needed, to form a soft, workable dough.
- Divide the dough into 24 balls and place them in the prepared baking pan.
- Cover the baking pan with lightly greased plastic wrap. Let the dough rise until puffy, about 1 1/2-2 hours.
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
- Remove the plastic wrap and bake until the rolls are golden-brown and set, for about 20-25 minutes.
- Brush the warm rolls with the extra melted butter.
- Serve!
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