Dinner Rolls –white or wheat

These are my easy - makes a lot - no knead recipe I got from a friend of my mom's and have been making for years. In fact, they have come to be called by most of my friends "Beth Rolls". 

Makes 3-4 dozen (you decide - 3 dozen big or 4 dozen smaller) rolls.

Ingredients:

1 cup of sugar

2 tsp. salt

Yeast- 3 packages for wheat, 2 packages for white (1 pkg = 2 1/4 tsp - for white, I use 4.5 teaspoons)

1/2 cup potato flakes

2 ¾ cups warm water (tip: warm to the touch as you would for a bath)

½ cup melted butter   (1 stick)

2 eggs slightly beaten

6 cups of flour or right consistency (see picture) - I have used as much as 7 at times.

Mix all ingredients together in the order listed - stirring as you add each new wet ingredient.  Cover and allow dough to rise 1-1 ½ hours until doubles in size (usually takes an hour in the summer and a half hour more in the winter.) The dough will be sticky - it's ok - it's supposed to be. Just stir. You don't need to knead. It looks like this:

Spray your work surface with cooking spray ("pam") and sprinkle with flour - you can just do flour, but I like the cooking spray for these so my flour sticks to the surface and coats it well. My work surface is my pampered chef stone - because it's round and that's the shape I'm about to roll.

Scoop out about 1/4 of the dough onto your prepped area and sprinkle well with flour. (It's ok if your dough sections are not equal - or if your slices are not equal - some rolls sized for me, some rolls sized for the minions.) :)

Roll out like a round pizza -circle (my stone is probably 14" diameter).  Cut dough with pizza cutter into 12 slices (that's across top to bottom, side to side, then each quarter into thirds...you probably knew that, but my daughter who was helping me here - age 6 at the time - needed that tip!)  Then roll each piece from wide end to narrow. 

(Alternatively, you could just divide each chunk of dough into 12 pieces and roll into balls...but because I like my balls to be perfect, that would take more time for me.)

Place each roll onto a greased cookie sheet.  (Leave a little space - they grow in the oven.) 

Allow to rise 1-1 ½ hrs.

Bake @ 400 degrees for 10-15 minutes. 

 Chief of the Minions made this batch-
I usually work side by side when I let my kids help me in the kitchen, but I had twisted my knee the night before and my husband had meetings all afternoon at church, but we all wanted rolls that Sunday, so my daughter followed verbal directions and I hobbled to the oven for the baking part - I'm not really cool with a 6 year old using the oven! She was so excited she'd made mom's rolls by herself.

Quick to copy/print version:

Dinner Rolls –white or wheat

1 cup of sugar

2 tsp. salt

Yeast- 3 packages for wheat, 2 packages for white

1/2 cup potato flakes or pearls

2 ¾ cups warm water

 ½ cup melted butter   (1 stick)

2 eggs slightly beaten

6 cups of flour or right consistency

Mix all ingredients together.  Allow dough to rise 1-1 ½ hours until doubles in size

(spray round pizza pan with cooking spray to roll out three balls; flour hands)

For crescent rolls- divide dough into 4 parts. Roll out like thin round pizza circle.  Cut dough into 12 "slices" with pizza cutter and then roll each piece from wide end to narrow. Or roll into round rolls

Place each roll onto a greased cookie sheet.  Allow to rise 1-1 ½ hrs.

Bake @400 degrees for 10-15 minutes. Makes 4 dozen

Update: To freeze, bag them in freezer ziploc bags while slightly warm, then freeze for up to several months. Reheat on a baking sheet from frozen or thaw on the counter in bag then reheat the same way. (Bagging them while warm will cause moisture to build up in the bag but they will be moister when reheated.)
I reheat at whatever temperature every thing else that night needs and watch them.