Thanksgiving Rolls

A warm, freshly baked dinner roll is one of the biggest highlights of the holidays. If you’ve never tried your hand at making them from scratch, this straightforward, easy recipe is for you. With only a few simple ingredients and a little bit of hands-off time, you can have soft, buttery dinner rolls not only for Thanksgiving dinner, but any time of the year.

This recipe recommends a stand mixer to do the mixing and kneading, but don’t worry if you don’t have one! You can mix the dough with a wooden spoon or rubber spatula and do the kneading by hand. You’ll mix and knead for the same amount of time as the recipe calls for, and you’ll get a bonus arm workout in the process.

Here’s a useful shaping tip: I use my left pointer finger to poke under the ball of dough, while wrapping my right thumb and pointer finger around the dough ball to shape it into a smooth ball, then pinch the bottom seams together.

If you’d like to make these ahead of time, you have three options:

- The dough can be made up the point where you place the shaped rolls in the pan and kept in the refrigerator, covered, for up to 12 hours. Three hours before you plan to bake the rolls, remove from the refrigerator, keep covered, and let rise at room temperature about 1 to 2 hours.
- The dough can also be frozen. Make the recipe up to the point when you shape and place the rolls in the pan. At this point, you can cover them with plastic wrap and freeze up to 2 months. Once frozen, they can be popped out of the pan and into a freezer bag. Six hours before you plan to bake them, remove them from the freezer, place them into the baking dish, cover, then let them thaw and rise about 4 to 5 hours. Bake as directed.
- The finished rolls can be frozen as well. Let the finished rolls come to room temperature, place in freezer bags, then freeze up to 3 months. Thaw in the refrigerator or at room temperature, then reheat in a 300° oven until warmed, about 10 minutes.

Made these? Let us know how it went in the comments below!