Homemade Dinner Rolls

Try these homemade dinner rolls made from scratch, simple to make using just a few pantry ingredients. Soft, buttery, and sweet, this is an easy yeast rolls for beginners recipe.

Homemade Honey Yeast Dinner Rolls

We love bread recipes in our home and, if it were up to some of us, we would live on homemade rolls and bread. Recipes like Sourdough Dinner Rolls, Buttermilk Biscuits, and Sourdough Biscuits are just a few of our favorites.

This is my family’s favorite dinner rolls recipe, and I am sharing all of the helpful tips and tricks on making them. I love how simple this buttery dinner rolls recipe is and how it will make any home cook feel confident in baking homemade bread.

These homemade honey yeast rolls come out perfect every time, and everyone will ask you to bake them for church gatherings or to serve at the holiday table! This is one of those recipes that needs to be handwritten and passed from generation to generation.

These honey butter rolls are made with seven staple pantry ingredients — yeast, milk, honey, butter, flour, eggs, and salt. Baked dinner rolls are soft and fluffy, tender with a buttery texture, and absolutely divine served warm out of the oven.

Why You Will Love Homemade Dinner Rolls

• Naturally Sweetened: this yeast roll recipe calls for using raw honey which is much healthier than using white sugar.
• Simple: when I start talking about making dinner rolls with yeast, some people are intimidated. But I am here to show you just how easy it is to make homemade yeast rolls from scratch.
• Flavor: this dough is rich, meaning that the dough is made with milk, eggs, honey and butter. This is what makes these so melt in your mouth delicious with their soft and fluffy texture.

Kitchen Essentials You May need

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• Baking Stone or Baking Sheet: I love baking on stoneware for even consistent results and even have an entire post dedicated to my love of stoneware. But, any baking pan will work.
• Stand Mixer: this bread dough can be kneaded by hand but the stand mixer makes it much easier by doing the work for you.
• Digital Thermometer: useful for making sure that the milk is at the correct temperature.
• Kitchen Scale: use to measure the dough to get rolls that are all uniform in size.
• Mixing Bowls: available in small, medium and large – I love the feel and vintage style of stoneware mixing bowls.
• Measuring Cups
• Measuring Spoons
• Linen Towel: cover the dough while it rises with a beautiful linen towel.

Homemade Dinner Roll Ingredients

This easy homemade dinner rolls recipe requires just seven simple pantry staples for your ingredient list:

• Milk:  This will serve as the base liquid for the bread dough. While some recipes use warm water to activate the yeast, this recipe uses warm milk.
• Butter: room temperature butter
• Eggs: the golden rules of baking is that fat equals flavor! Adding eggs adds flavor, helps the bread rise, makes fluffy dinner rolls, with a texture that is moist and soft.
• Honey: the only sweetness in this recipe and it is delicious!
• Yeast: This recipe calls for 4 1/2 teaspoons of instant yeast which is what gives the rolls their beautiful rise.
• Flour: All-purpose flour but you can also use bread flour.
• Salt: Flavorful bread needs salt!

How To make Homemade Dinner Rolls

• 2 cups whole milk or half-n-half
• 4 1/2 teaspoons dry active yeast
• 2 teaspoons honey
• 5 1/2 – 6 cups of flour (I use all purpose organic flour)
• 1/2 cup raw honey
• 2 large egg
• 1/2 cup butter, room temperature
• 1 teaspoon salt

Proof the Yeast

In a small saucepan, warm 2 cups of milk to about 100-110 degrees over low heat. Once warm, transfer the warm milk to a medium bowl. Add 4 1/2 teaspoons of yeast and two teaspoons of honey. Let sit for 5 minutes or until the yeast mixture is foamy.

Make the Dough

Add 1/2 cup of honey, two eggs, one stick of room temperature butter, salt, and 1 cup of flour to the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a dough hook attachment or paddle attachment. Mix at low speed to combine the ingredients.

Add foamy yeast, honey, and milk mixture and mix to combine. Slowly add remaining flour 1 cup at a time until the mixture pulls away from the sides of the bowl and forms dough around the hook, about 3-5 minutes. The dough should be slightly sticky but manageable with lightly oiled hands.

Transfer Dough

Lightly grease a large bowl with softened butter. Place the bread dough into the greased bowl, and turn dough to coat all sides. Cover bowl with a clean linen kitchen towel or plastic wrap.

Let Dough Rise

For the first rise, place bread dough in a warm place for about an hour or until the dough doubles in size.

Shape Rolls

Once the dough has risen, punch the dough down to release the air bubbles. Using a clean work surface, divide the dough into equal portions or use a kitchen scale to weigh each piece of dough into 2-ounce sections. Shape each of the dough balls into a smooth ball.

Transfer the shaped rolls to a 9×13 greased baking dish or stoneware pan. Cover with a clean kitchen towel and let them rise for about one hour in a warm spot.

Bake the Rolls

Place the baking dish in a preheated 350-degree oven on a lower positioned rack. Bake rolls for 20-25 minutes, rotating the baking sheet halfway until golden brown on top.

Cool Rolls

Remove rolls from the oven. In a small bowl, combine 1/2 cup melted butter and 1/4 cup honey. Brush some delicious honey butter over the top of the rolls. This is what gives the dinner rolls that beautiful golden sheen and irresistible flavor!

Allow the rolls to cool before transferring them to a wire rack to finish cooling. Serve warm.

Tips for Making Homemade Dinner Rolls

• Fresh Yeast: check the expiration date on yeast package to be sure that you are not using expired yeast. If the yeast mixture does not foam up, you will need to throw out the batch and begin again with new yeast.
• Warm Milk: the warmth of the milk is what helps activate the yeast so be sure that you get the milk to the right temperature. If the milk gets to hot, it will kill the yeast while if it is too cool, the yeast may not activate. Using a digital thermometer helps to be sure that the milk reaches the right temperature.
• Rise Time: the first and second rise times are both about 60-90 minutes depending on the temperature in your home. Don’t rush this process as it is essential in getting the fluffy, soft texture in these rolls.
• Measure Roll Dough: make sure that rolls are all about the same size as this will ensure that all of the rolls bake evenly at the same time. I use a kitchen scale and weigh each roll to 2 ounces.
• Check the Rolls: halfway through the baking time, check the rolls and rotate the pans to be sure that they all brown evenly on the top.
• Butter Your Hands: for years, I would use flour on my hands to shape the dough into rolls. Then, I learned the trick of using softened butter to handle the sticky dough and it makes the process so much easier (and tastier) to use butter.
• Butter Your Baking Sheets: do you see a trend here? Butter is a good thing! Go ahead and spread a very thin layer of butter on your baking sheet to create a non stick surface for your homemade dinner rolls!
• Bake on Low Rack: This is one of the best tips I have learned when baking perfect rolls. Lower the oven rack closer to the bottom as this will prevent the rolls from browning as quickly on the tops.

What to Serve with Homemade Dinner Rolls

I tend to associate dinner rolls with large family gatherings at Thanksgiving dinner and Christmas, so they always make me think of the holidays. While these are the best homemade dinner rolls for gatherings, they are also the perfect addition to weeknight meals.

With my own family, we often have these at least once a week with our Sunday dinners when I serve Chuck Roast baked in a dutch oven. Here are a few other recipes you may love to try as well with a side of delicious rolls!

• Old Fashioned Meatloaf
• Homemade Chicken Noodle Soup
• Dutch Oven Vegetable Soup
• Beef Stew
• Dutch Oven Potato Soup

Frequently Asked Questions

How to Mix Dough Without a Mixer

If you do not have a stand mixer, you can knead the dough by hand. Mix the dough with a large wooden spoon until you can no longer mix it. Use a well floured work surface and spoon the bread mixture out. Start kneading the dough until it is smooth and elastic.

How to Shape Bread Rolls

For a basic round shape, divide dough into 2-ounce pieces. Stretch the top of the dough over tucking it on the underside of each roll, until you have a smooth top on the roll. Continue doing this until you have a smooth roll with a sealed bottom.

How Long to Bake Dinner Rolls

Bake the dinner rolls at 350˚F until golden brown (about 20-25 minutes). When the dinner rolls come out of the oven, brush them with butter.

I hope that you find this easy dinner roll recipe simple enough to make. They are truly the best dinner rolls that I have ever had!

Printable Recipe Card

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For this post, you will see snippets of our home and life as Lydia and I make homemade dinner rolls together.

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